Thieves
by Alchemine
Summary: Baxter promised Lady Grantham she would never commit another crime again, and she meant it. But on a summer trip to visit Cora's family in New York, chance will bring her into closer contact with criminal acts than she wants to be. (Post-s6)
1. Chapter 1

Even after more than thirty-five years of living in England, Lady Grantham is still known as "that American" in certain circles. She can't shake the label, nor does she particularly wish to, but neither is she in the habit of making regular visits to her native country. She took her daughters there as young girls, both for the experience of travelling by ship and to show them where she was born, but since then she's left it up to them to decide whether they want to return or not. She herself can't be bothered. It's exhausting to get there and even more exhausting to be there, and if her mother and brother want to see her that badly, well, ocean liners sail in both directions, don't they?

Phyllis Baxter knows perfectly well what her employer's feelings on this subject are—as she knows Cora's feelings on almost every subject, to a degree of intimacy that would probably disturb Lord Grantham if he knew—and so she is surprised as well as dismayed when Cora announces, in early July, that the two of them are set to travel to New York in just over a week for a long visit to the Levinson family.

"I've already arranged your ticket," her Ladyship says airily, "and I'll keep you in first class with me, of course. It would be an awful nuisance for you to have to traipse back and forth from the lower decks." She touches a drop of perfume to each wrist and rubs them together. "We'll stay until late September or early October, I think. It's such a long way, I've got to make it a real visit or the trip isn't worth it. And we won't be in the city the whole time; it's much too hot, especially in August. My family has a house in Newport too, and I haven't been to the boat regatta there in fifteen years."

Phyllis has been struggling to maintain a calm demeanour while this news sinks in on her, but she must not be making a very good job of it, because Cora sees her in the mirror and turns round with a slightly perplexed expression.

"Are you all right, Baxter? You look as if I've said we're going to the moon. It isn't as if you haven't travelled with me before."

"Yes, of course, milady. I just...I've never gone anywhere by ship, and it's a long way, as you said."

"I do know there are people here whom you'll miss," Cora says. Despite this delicate phrasing, or perhaps because of it, Phyllis knows she's referring to Mr Molesley, whom she often asks after in a significant sort of way. Lady Mary and Lady Edith are both married off at last, but the maternal matchmaking impulse dies hard. "And I sympathise, but I can't get along without you for three months, so I hope you'll try to make the best of things. I think you'll enjoy America, once you get used to it."

"I'm sure I will, milady."

"Oh, good," Cora says, and gives Phyllis the sweet smile that she uses to get her way with crusty old aristocrats and people who are being difficult about donating to the hospital. "That's settled, then. I'll go down to dinner now and see you at bedtime, Baxter."

Cora sweeps off in an expensive-smelling cloud of Shalimar, and Phyllis hangs up her discarded afternoon frock and tidies the room for their next round of dressing and undressing. Finished with work at least temporarily, she puts on her outdoor clothes and goes out through the back gate to walk down to the village. They've just passed the solstice and it's still very light even at almost nine o'clock, so she has an easy time of it and can let her mind wander while her feet automatically navigate the path. It's true she's enjoyed the trips north with her Ladyship in the past, but she isn't certain she wants to go all the way to America, and she knows she doesn't want to be away for the whole summer.

By the time she gets to Molesley's cottage, she's feeing miserable about it, and she sees the soft pink blooms of his climbing roses through a blurred film of tears as she knocks and waits. There's a long delay before Molesley opens the door, with his shirtsleeves turned up and a damp tea towel in his hands, wearing a grin of pleasure that fades as soon as he catches sight of her face.

"Good Lord, what's the matter? Come in." He stands back to let her through the door, which leads directly into his tiny, sparsely furnished sitting room, and then closes it behind her. "Is someone ill up at the house?"

"No, no, everyone's fine."

"You haven't found another ghost in the attic?"

"Don't tease." Phyllis does her best to give him a severe look.

"I'm not. Have you?"

"No."

"Well, come sit down and tell me what's happened." Molesley folds his tea towel, obeying the force of long habit, and drapes it over the back of a chair to dry. "Here, there's space on the settee."

"Space" is a bit of an exaggeration, as the battered old velvet settee is covered with heaps of papers that are threatening to topple over, but Phyllis wedges herself in between them and explains briefly what Lady Grantham told her.

"Really? Three months?"

Phyllis nods, and Molesley frowns. "That's an awfully long time. Isn't there a way someone else could go for you, the way Barrow travelled for Bates once?"

"Who, though? Anna can't leave her little boy, and her Ladyship won't want a stranger. Anyway, she's already said it's got to be me."

"Unless you give in your notice," Molesley suggests. "Then no one could make you."

"Don't be silly, of course I can't do that." Phyllis screws up her face in irritated confusion, wondering what he's on about. "I've done so much to keep this position. Why would I give it up now?"

"Well, if we…never mind, you're right." He's been sitting in the chair with the tea towel, but now he gets up and pushes the papers to the floor—sending them spilling and slithering in all directions—and takes the place beside her instead.

"I won't pretend I'm not going to miss you. I am, awfully. But you've got to go, so you may as well make the best of it."

"Her Ladyship said the same thing," Phyllis says with a sigh, and Molesley puts his arm round her shoulders and gives her a comforting squeeze.

"Well, her Ladyship is right. It's not everyone who gets to make the crossing and see New York, after all. I'd like to, myself."

"D'you want to go in my place?" Phyllis asks, only half joking, and Molesley laughs and says he's fairly certain he'd make a hash of doing her Ladyship's hair. The idea of him working on Cora with a pair of curling tongs makes Phyllis laugh too, despite her unhappiness about leaving, and she leans into the embrace and promises to write twice a week while she's away.

Once Cora's made her announcement, things proceed at a pace that makes Phyllis's head spin. They're sailing on the RMS _Olympic_ , which Mrs Patmore, an avid reader of film magazines, informs her is the preferred transatlantic conveyance of Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin. She goes on to suggest that if Phyllis happens to bump into one of them, or any other film star, she should try to get an autograph made out in the name of Beryl Patmore. "That's spelt B-E-R-Y-L," she adds helpfully, and Phyllis says she'll see what she can do, privately thinking that the odds of her approaching Douglas Fairbanks to ask for an autograph, for Mrs Patmore or anyone else, are nil.

She extracts herself from the conversation as gracefully as possible and goes up to her room to stare into the half-packed steamer trunk she's been provided with and wonder if there's not still some way she can get out of this. She can't say why she's so uneasy about the trip—she's not frightened of the ship sinking, or of falling overboard, or any of the other deadly possibilities Daisy has suggested to her, but the worry of it is keeping her awake at night and making it hard to concentrate on her work.

They're set to leave by train for the first part of the journey on Monday, then sail on Wednesday, and waiting for the day to come is like waiting for her own execution. Maybe she'll fall downstairs and break her leg before then, she thinks, folding up nightdresses and underclothes and fitting them into empty spaces. But Monday morning arrives without so much as a stubbed toe, and Phyllis is forced to let Andy strap her trunk onto the car along with Cora's heaps of baggage while she says goodbye to Molesley, who has walked up early to see her off. She'd like to embrace him, or at least take his hand, but with the staff and family present, they're sadly limited in their options for farewells.

"Don't forget you promised to write."

"I won't." She tries a smile. "You'll have to take quantity over quality, though. I'm no Jane Austen."

"I'd rather have one postcard from you than a whole book from old Jane," Molesley says, and at that Phyllis really does smile. "There, that's better. Keep safe, and I'll see you when you come home."

On this note, she sets off feeling more positive about the trip, and enjoys the train journey to Southampton, where she has never been, and then the experience of boarding the ship. She's viewed dozens of splendid homes and elegant hotels in the course of her work, but the _Olympic_ 's first-class accommodations are truly opulent, and her own smaller cabin, which adjoins Cora's and is meant specifically for a lady's maid, gleams with polished wood panelling and gold-rimmed portholes. She's especially impressed by the bathroom taps, which offer not only ordinary hot and cold running water, but also hot salt and cold salt, and vows to try a hot saltwater bath as soon as she possibly can.

It's a plan that fails as soon as they steam out into the open sea and the engines reach full capacity, at which point Phyllis discovers that she is one of the unfortunate people who get seasick. Cora, experienced in ocean travel, tells her she'll feel better if she goes above and gets some fresh air, but she can barely drag herself out of bed to perform her duties, and the idea of climbing up to the promenade deck feels as impossible as reaching the summit of Everest. The torment lasts for the first two days of the voyage, until just when she's seriously thinking of throwing herself over a railing to put an end to her suffering, it disappears during the night and she wakes up with an appetite for breakfast.

After that, the remainder of the journey is much more tolerable, and she finds the energy to tour the entire ship and write the first of her promised letters to Molesley, trying her best to describe everything to him in detail (save the fact that she's spent forty-eight hours of the voyage getting sick in every available receptacle, which is something she would prefer to forget). On the back of the last page, she makes a careful, accurate sketch of the horizon as seen from the bow, and then folds the whole thing up and addresses the envelope in her best handwriting, to be posted as soon as they disembark. As she goes to bed that night, their last on board, the thought of how Molesley will enjoy receiving a letter with a New York postmark sends her off to sleep feeling really happy for the first time in a week.


	2. Chapter 2

When they dock in New York, Phyllis's first impression, even before disembarking, is of incredible, stifling heat. She can feel sultry air coming through the open porthole as she's gathering up the last of Cora's things, and when they finally step out onto the gangplank, they're greeted by a shimmering wall of heat that nearly bowls her over. It's hotter than the hottest summer day she has ever experienced; hot in the way she imagines that deserts and jungles are hot, with a sweltering humidity that immediately glues all her clothes to her. She envies Cora's light, sleeveless linen dress fiercely, and decides then and there to get rid of at least one layer of undergarments at the first opportunity. They're more than three thousand miles from home and no one will know, and anyway, she has heard that women in America are much looser and more liberated. Perhaps she'll go home dressed like Louise Brooks or Clara Bow, she thinks, smiling to herself at the absurdity of it even as she tries to discreetly fan some air underneath her skirt.

Mrs Levinson hasn't come to meet them off the ship in person, but has sent a car and her chauffeur instead. He's a tall, slim man with light-brown skin, pomaded hair and an easy, open smile, and after he settles Cora in the back seat and winds up the glass partition between them, he carries on a cheerful conversation with Phyllis as he navigates the long car expertly through the teeming streets around the piers. It's mostly one-sided, as she's half smothered from the heat and is a little shy around strangers at the best of times, but he doesn't seem to mind, and she finds it's pleasant sitting there with her hands folded in her lap, having landmarks pointed out to her and catching the occasional breath of breeze from the window.

After a bit the streets grow wider, cleaner and less crowded, and the buildings both more elaborate and lower to the ground; they're not really small, but they feel that way in contrast to the skyscrapers. If Molesley were the one making this trip, she thinks, he would have read up on architecture beforehand and know exactly what all the different decorative arches and cornices meant, instead of just watching them pass. Thinking about Molesley gives her a sudden deep pang of homesickness, and she turns and fixes her gaze on the plane trees rolling past outside her window, a gesture the chauffeur takes for admiration of the scenery.

"It's nicer as you go uptown, huh?" he says.

Phyllis clears her throat so her voice won't sound choked. "Uptown?"

"If you want to get around the city on your own, you got to know uptown, downtown, East Side, West Side. We came from the Lower West Side, and we're going to the Upper East. Avenues run north and south and streets run east and west."

"Oh, I see."

"Really?"

"No," Phyllis confesses, and he laughs.

"Don't worry, I'll show you on a map when we get where we're going. It's a piece of cake once you see how it works. Anyway, uptown's for the swells."

"The what?"

"You know, the rich folks." He glances back at Cora behind the glass partition, but Cora is writing something in a tiny notebook she's pulled from her handbag, and appears not to be paying attention. "They all used to live on Fifth Avenue, you know, Millionaires' Row, but a lot of them are selling their houses to developers who want to knock 'em down to build stores. Bergdorf Goodman's going up next year where Cornelius Vanderbilt's place is now. They're something to see, though, those mansions. Some folks have more money than they know what to do with."

The names mean little or nothing to Phyllis, and she finds the open talk of money rather embarrassing, but she nods, understanding the spirit of what he means, if not the content.

"Where does Mrs Levinson live?" she asks.

"Sixty-fifth and Fifth." He looks at her sidelong, sees confusion on her face, and clarifies. "Sixty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue. Real swanky, right across the way from where John Jacob Astor used to live. That's it just ahead."

Phyllis looks where he's pointing and sees an ornate stone edifice rearing up toward the blazing blue sky. "The one with the railing round the top?"

"That's the one. And here we are, safe and sound."

"Thank you, Mr—I'm so sorry, I don't think I heard your name."

"That's 'cause I never said it." The chauffeur grins. "Most people who come to see Mrs Levinson don't care as long as I drive them where they want to go. But it's Calvin. Calvin Rhodes. And you are...?"

"Phyllis Baxter."

"Well, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Phyllis Baxter." Calvin makes a smooth turn and stops the car directly opposite the house's entrance. "Here we are. Doesn't look that big from the front, but it takes up half the block. You'll see when you get inside."

The house is indeed a grand one, although Phyllis is accustomed to the soaring rooms and rich tapestries and paintings at Downton Abbey and takes it all in stride. It's a good thing she's not very attached to it, because after the first week, Cora comes storming into her room to be undressed for bed and announces that they'll be staying at the nearby Plaza Hotel for the rest of their time in New York. Phyllis says "yes, milady" and keeps taking down Cora's hair, knowing that if she keeps quiet the story will emerge on its own, and after a few minutes of seething, Cora bursts out that her mother is the most difficult woman who ever lived, and if they spend another two and a half months under one roof without a break, one of them will surely murder the other one.

"This is why I don't like to visit her on her own turf, Baxter," she adds. "I wouldn't have come this time either if I hadn't had to." This makes Phyllis wildly curious—after all, it's because of Cora that she's had to come herself—but for once her Ladyship manages to keep her own counsel, and the curiosity goes unsatisfied.

Once they've moved, Phyllis enjoys the Plaza, where she has her own room adjoining Cora's and is treated as a somewhat lower-level paying guest rather than a servant, but New York itself leaves much to be desired. She's lived in London and is used to the smell of a gargantuan city with a fetid river running through it, but New York's boiling summer heat seems to concentrate and intensify ordinary smells into an eye-watering stench. It's worst downtown, where Calvin has driven them a few times for Cora and her mother to deal with some sort of mysterious financial business, but even in the stylish neighbourhoods that the Levinsons frequent, there's a pervasive, nearly intolerable reek composed of hot tarmac, fumes from passing vehicles, horse manure and rotting rubbish bins—and, of course, sweaty people, which includes Phyllis no matter how carefully she bathes or how much dusting powder and rubbing alcohol she applies to herself. Sweat runs down her back and collects in strange places, like the crooks of her elbows and the backs of her knees, and when Molesley writes that they're having an exceptionally cold and wet summer this year, she imagines it with a longing that borders on the indecent. Mrs Levinson's maid tells her that in only a few months, the city will be snowed in and Central Park will look like the Arctic, but Phyllis fervently hopes they will have gone home by then.

After the second week, she's learnt to go out and conduct as much of her business as she can early in the day, before the heat has a chance to build up and reflect off the pavements like an oven, and then to spend the afternoon indoors, reading or sewing or writing to Molesley to tell him, yet again, that she misses him. It's the twenty-eighth of July now, and they're scheduled to leave for the Levinsons' other home in Newport, wherever that is, on the first of August, which is when Mrs Levinson says it will really get hot in the city. (Phyllis, who was in the front seat of the car when Mrs Levinson made this pronouncement from the rear, was horrified and is still wondering how much hotter it could possibly get.) She asks her Ladyship if a month in the same house with her mother won't be difficult, and Cora says she can grit her teeth and bear it for the sake of Newport's cooler climate.

"Never again, though," she says. "This is my last trip to America, Baxter. Once we're finished here, I intend to live and die in England. Will you do my hair higher up off my neck today, please? I know it's not the latest style, but I can't bear to have it sticking to me."

Phyllis complies with the request, escorts Cora down to the hotel's lobby and hands her over to Calvin, who is driving her and Mrs Levinson to a charity breakfast, and then sets off on her own, armed with a carefully written list of things she needs to buy and the map Calvin supplied her with on their first day in the city. She's discovered since then that the grid system of streets and avenues he described makes it surprisingly easy to find her way around, though she's taken a few wrong turnings. She is planning to ask Calvin if she can keep the map to show to Molesley, who enjoys that sort of thing.

As she gets farther from the park and closer to midtown, there are fewer trees lining the avenue, but still enough for her to keep to the shade for the most part. It rained overnight, which did nothing to make the weather any cooler, and the tarmac is steaming gently as the puddles evaporate into the bright hot morning air. She consults the map, turns a corner onto a new street, and sees it's mostly empty except for an old woman with a trio of tiny, fluffy dogs, a man walking in a hurry, as if late for work, and a little girl, ten years old or so, heading in the opposite direction to her on the same side of the road. The girl's feet are bare, which isn't uncommon for poor children in New York (the wealthy ones, like Master George, Miss Sybbie and Miss Marigold at home, wear boots if they're boys, or ruffled white socks and leather shoes with a T-strap if they're girls), but seems incongruous here on this shabby-genteel street. Her black hair is roughly bobbed with an uneven fringe, and her dress is both too tight and too short, as if she's grown and no one has noticed.

Phyllis's first thought is to ask if she's lost, but she seems to know where she's going—at any rate, her head is down and she's striding fast and purposefully. On the open pavement, it should be easy for her to go around Phyllis, who is already at the far right to stay underneath the trees, and that means it's a surprise when she collides full on with her instead. They're all tangled up for a moment as Phyllis stumbles, nearly goes down on one knee, and gets her balance again, and somehow in the midst of the confusion, she feels a hand tugging at her bag. Her own hand shoots out almost of its own accord and grabs hold of the dirty wrist attached to that invading appendage, and next thing she knows, she's holding the struggling girl out at arm's length, like a fisherman with a large and unexpected catch.

"Ow!" The girl squirms. "Let go. I ain't done nothing."

"Only tried to put your hand in my bag," Phyllis says. She eases her grip a little, not wanting to hurt the child, but holds her fast and pulls her to the inside of the pavement, out of the path of any foot traffic that may come along. Her heart is racing with the shock of this sudden encounter. "I know all about that trick. You bump into someone on the street and then take their purse while they're distracted, don't you?"

"Don't know what you're talking about," the girl says.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. You didn't make a very good job of it, either. I've met people who could nick your wristwatch while they were shaking your hand."

"Oh yeah?" The girl scowls up at her. "Well, sorry I ain't a good enough thief for you, lady. I'll go right home and get to work on improving if you just let _go_."

Now that she's standing still, Phyllis can get a better look at the bruises on her spindly legs and the dark circles under her eyes. She's thin as a twig, but it's difficult to tell whether it's malnutrition or just the naturally skinny build of some prepubescent girls, including Phyllis herself when she was that age. Combined with the rest of her appearance, though, it seems safe to assume she hasn't eaten a good meal in a while.

"If you needed money you could have asked me for it," Phyllis says. "You didn't have to steal it."

The girl sneers. "Yeah, right. And you'd give it to me just like that."

"Try me," Phyllis says. "How much do you want?"

"I dunno. Two bits?"

"How much is that?"

"A _quarter_ ," the girl says in scathing tones, as if she can't believe what an idiot she's tried to rob.

Phyllis is still hazy on how much a quarter is actually worth, but she knows she has one to give. "All right. Do you promise not to run if I let go? I need both my hands free."

"Yeah," the girl says warily, and Phyllis turns her loose, fishes the purse out of her handbag and opens the clasp.

"Here." She presses the coin into the girl's hand, trying not to pull a face at the dirt ground into the lines of the palm. It's thick, crusted grime, the sort that accumulates over weeks rather than days, and she wonders how long it has been since this child had a bath. She smells ripe, but so does everyone and everything else in this steaming swamp of a city, so it's hard to gauge accurately.

"What's your name?" she asks.

"Like I'd tell you." The girl backs up a step or two, and Phyllis winces at the sight of those small bare feet coming down mere inches away from cigarette ends and gobs of other people's spit and droppings that probably came from the dog-walking woman's Pomeranians. "How do I know you won't get the cops after me?"

"If I wanted to do that, I'd have screamed 'thief' when I caught you trying to dip me," Phyllis points out reasonably. "You'd be in the back of a Black Maria right now. I didn't, though, so why don't you tell me your name?"

"Ruthie," the girl says. "Ruthie Kelly."


	3. Chapter 3

"How do you do, Ruthie?" Phyllis extends a gloved hand as a peace offering, but Ruthie regards it with disdain, which she supposes is only fair, as it's the same hand she was using to hold the girl captive a moment ago. She draws it back and tries a more direct approach.

"Where are your parents?"

"Dunno. Never met one of 'em, haven't seen the other one since I was little. We live with our auntie."

"We?"

"Me and my kid brothers." She's starting to edge away, looking around nervously as if she might be watched, but even the Pomeranians' owner has gone. Unless someone is lurking behind one of the white curtains that hang limply at every open window, they are alone, at least for now. "Look, lady, thanks for the quarter and not ratting on me and all, but I got to go."

"What, to look for someone else to steal from?"

"What's it to you if I do?"

"I don't want you to get into trouble, that's what. I haven't told the police, but the next person you try this on might, and then you'll go to prison, and you don't want that."

A dark car turns at the end of the street and crawls toward them, and Ruthie blanches, then recovers her bravado as it passes without incident.

"You don't know I'll go to prison," she says. "You ain't even from here. I can tell. You don't know nothing at all."

"I know more than you think," Phyllis says. The sun is getting higher, beating down on her back and shoulders, and she feels the first trickle of sweat slip stealthily along the back of her neck. "How much money will it take for you to promise not to steal for the rest of the day?"

Ruthie frowns and crosses thin, bare arms over the faded blue bodice of her dress. "This some sort of bribe?"

"Call it what you like," Phyllis says. "Just tell me how much."

"Another two bits, I guess."

Phyllis inspects her funds, which are fairly healthy; she hasn't had to spend much of her own money on this trip because her Ladyship pays for most things. "I haven't got any more quarters. What other coins make that much?"

"Two dimes and a nickel," Ruthie says impatiently, watching Phyllis sift through the contents of her purse. "Jesus. The dimes are the littlest ones and a nickel is bigger than a penny. There." She snatches the coins from Phyllis's hand and stuffs them into a pocket on the front of her dress, along with the quarter. "OK, thanks, bye now."

"Wait," Phyllis says. "Can you meet me here tomorrow, at the same time?"

"What for?" Ruthie asks. There's a suspicious expression on her face that makes her look like a shrunken, bitter old woman instead of a little girl, and it makes Phyllis's heart go out to her. No child should ever look that way, she thinks.

"To talk. I'll give you more money if you do. Or..." She remembers her earlier hypothesis about the likely state of Ruthie's diet. "I'll treat you to lunch. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

The look of pure, naked hunger in Ruthie's eyes at this prospect makes Phyllis feel guilty about dangling food in front of her as an incentive, but she decides it's worth it when the girl nods.

"Ain't supposed to go off with strangers, you know. It's dangerous. There's perverts and kidnappers and stuff." Ruthie pulls a wry face. "But yeah, if you're buying. Gotta find a hot dog stand or something, though. People who eat lunch in sit-down places don't want to see no dirty kids hanging around."

Phyllis looks at the outgrown dress, the bare feet and the crudely cut hair, and sees the utter impossibility of taking Ruthie to a restaurant, or even one of the lunch counters she's seen on her excursions in the car. "All right. You meet me here at—" She looks at her watch. "Eleven o'clock, and I'll buy you all you can eat. And remember, no stealing between now and then."

"Yeah, OK." Ruthie plunges a hand into her pocket, curls it round the money there to keep it safe, and turns on her heel to go. Two of the buttons up the back of her dress have been left undone to make it fit, and she isn't wearing a camisole underneath, giving Phyllis a clear view of the knobs of her spine jutting out like round stones under the skin. A little way down the street, she stops and turns back.

"Hey, lady! I told you my name, but you never told me yours. That ain't fair!"

"I'll tell you tomorrow," Phyllis calls back, and Ruthie huffs and makes a rude gesture over her shoulder as she leaves.

Still dazed from this strange interlude, Phyllis goes on to finish her errands, thinking the entire time about Ruthie and what she can say to warn the child off permanently from stealing. It is obvious that Ruthie's attempted crime had a different motivation than her own—as she once told Molesley, she hadn't been starving when she took those jewels—but she doubts the courts in America are any more sympathetic to people's circumstances than the ones at home. Ruthie may go to a training school or a reformatory now, but if she stays on this path, it won't be long before she grows up and becomes like the women Phyllis met in prison, the ones who had been in and out of institutions since childhood and didn't know any other way of life. She isn't certain why she cares so much about the fate of a strange girl who tried to rob her, but she does.

This is exactly the sort of thing that she would normally talk over with Molesley, and knowing she can't makes her feel a bit desperate. The best she can do is write to him, so she goes back to the Plaza through the ever-increasing heat, trudging along with her parcels of pins and thread and soap, and takes the lift up to her own room, where she has a cold bath, dresses in fresh clothes, and then sits down to begin a letter. She doesn't want to worry him—he is forever reminding her that she can't help everyone at her own expense, and she's quite certain he would say that Ruthie is already a lost cause—but neither is she willing to lie.

 _We leave for the Levinsons' other home on Friday, and I'm quite certain I won't see her again after that_ , she writes at the end, to underscore the idea that this is only a temporary situation, and then adds, _I wish you were here and could come with us._ This is so true that it brings tears to her eyes, and she hastily closes and signs the letter before she can get too soppy over it.

In the corridor outside, she hears Cora's voice thanking someone—probably a bellman—and gets up to make certain her hair is tidy and her dress is unwrinkled. She will need to prepare her Ladyship for the afternoon's activities, and then this evening go with her to Mrs Levinson's house so she can use the sewing machine there, and ask Mrs Levinson's maid what to pack for Newport. All that remains after that is to wait and hope that Ruthie keeps their appointment.

Luckily, Phyllis is good at waiting.


	4. Chapter 4

The Levinsons' city house has bedrooms for servants, but not a separate servants' hall like the one Phyllis is used to: instead, people squash in around a long table pushed up against a wall at one end of the kitchen, and try their best to stay out of the way of the cook and her assistants. Later that evening, while Lady Grantham is upstairs eating lamb and potatoes Hollandaise with her mother's guests, Phyllis goes down and finds that the table is empty except for a few dirty plates and a glass dish with a soft lump of butter sinking slowly into a pool of its own melted substance.

She looks at the red-faced, sweating, shouting cook, decides not to ask where everyone is or whether there's any food left for her to eat, and opens the door to the side yard instead, where she finds Calvin sitting on an upturned orange crate under the glow of an electric light fixture, finishing the last bite of a sandwich. The sun's down, but there are still a few blood-red streaks of sunset stretching across the dark sky from the west, and she can feel the paving stones radiating the day's heat through the soles of her shoes.

"Hey there, Miss Baxter." Calvin stands up, but she gestures for him to sit down again. "How's the weather treating you today?"

"Horribly. I don't know how people in New York can live through this every summer."

"Well, you kind of get used to it," Calvin says, "and what you don't get used to, you just have to grin and bear."

"Miss Snyder said in a few months everyone will be complaining about the snow."

Calvin laughs. "I bet she did. She's always the one complaining the loudest. The only reason she gets away with it is 'cause she's tougher than Miss Reed was and can stand up to Mrs Levinson's temper."

"I told her I hope we've gone home long before it snows," Phyllis says with a sigh. "It seems so far away."

"Least you've got a home to go back to," Calvin says. "Some people spend their whole lives missing a place and people they'll never see again."

"Oh!" Phyllis claps a hand over her pocket, where her letter to Molesley is tucked away. "That reminds me. I wrote a letter to a friend this afternoon and forgot to post it."

"I'll do it for you, if you want," Calvin offers. "I've got to take the car out first thing in the morning anyway, to get it shined up nice and pretty for Friday. Mrs Levinson can't let the other rich ladies see her arriving on the island in a dirty old car, you know."

"Would you? That's kind of you." Phyllis passes the letter to him, and he takes it and glances at the address.

"Mr Joseph Molesley. Oh, it's a _man_ friend." He grins and slips the envelope into his own pocket. "Who is this fella, and does he know how lucky he is to be getting love letters from the gorgeous Miss Phyllis Baxter?"

"I'm not," Phyllis says, feeling a blush ignite and start to bloom in her cheeks. "And it isn't a love letter."

"Well, that's a shame," Calvin says. "If my lady friend was away, I'd want her to write love letters to me." He stands up, laces his hands together behind his back and stretches with an audible crackling sound. "Did you get any supper, or did the cook scare you off?"

"She is a bit frightening," Phyllis says, and he laughs again.

"Let's go look in the icebox. Can't have you fainting on me."

"Thank you," Phyllis says gratefully. "Oh, and I meant to ask...do you know where I can find a hot dog stand?"

"A _hot_ dog stand?" Calvin's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "No offence, Miss Baxter, but I can't imagine you at a hot dog stand. It doesn't seem like the sort of place you'd want to go to."

Phyllis smiles. "It's not. I told a little girl I would buy her lunch tomorrow, and she said she wanted to go to a hot dog stand."

"There's a pushcart that sells 'em over by the park entrance on Columbus Circle most days. What about this little girl, though? Is she someone the Levinsons know?"

"No, no. We bumped into each other in the street when I was going to the shops this morning," Phyllis says. "It's a long story."

"You sure she's all right? You got to watch out for some of those street kids. They'll rob you blind if you let them, even the cute, sad-looking ones. Specially those ones, in fact."

"I'll be fine," Phyllis assures him. "I know how to look after myself."

When morning arrives, she's up and dressed at first light, and orders Lady Grantham's tea and toast as soon as the kitchens down in the bowels of the hotel are open for business. She's already asked for and received permission to go out after she helps Cora with her bath and dresses her for the morning, and at ten minutes to eleven, she's back on the street where she and Ruthie met, walking slowly so as not to arouse suspicion by just standing there. With Calvin's words in mind, she's only brought along enough money to give Ruthie her lunch and a bit extra for emergencies, leaving the bulk of it hidden at the bottom of her trunk back at the hotel. She doesn't expect Ruthie to try to rob her again, but better safe than sorry.

Even at a languid stroll, she still reaches the end of the street with no sign of Ruthie, so she goes round the block and comes back, and this time spots Ruthie's small figure coming toward her, giving her sudden, intense déjà vu for yesterday's collision. Today, however, Ruthie slows as she approaches and gives a little wave. She's wearing the same blue dress, but has added a bedraggled bit of white ribbon to her hair, and wedged her bare feet into soiled canvas shoes that have had the toes crudely cut out to make room. This is poverty at a level Phyllis has never personally experienced: she isn't from a wealthy family by any stretch of the imagination, but she and her sister were always kept clean and decently clothed, and if they went to bed hungry, it was for some punishment or other and not for want of food. She longs to swoop Ruthie up, take her back to the hotel, scrub her face and trim her chopped-off hair and dress her in something that fits.

"You gonna tell me your name now?" Ruthie says by way of greeting.

Phyllis imagines Mr Carson's stentorian voice booming out, _Polite people say good morning before they ask questions_ , but finds she doesn't have it in her to be too harsh with the girl.

"It's Miss Baxter," she says.

"Miss Baxter, huh?" Ruthie does a spot-on impression of Phyllis's own voice that would have been insolent if it weren't so devilishly accurate. "I didn't spend all your money from yesterday, just so's you know. I bought a loaf of bread and a can of milk so the kids could have breakfast. Only cost eighteen cents."

"I thought you said you lived with your aunt," Phyllis says. "Doesn't she give you your meals?"

"Auntie Jess? That's funny," Ruthie says, but there's no touch of humour on her sharp little face. "She ain't home much, and when she is she's usually asleep, and you don't wake her up and ask her to make you some eggs unless you want a whipping to go along with 'em. Even the boys know better than that."

"How old are they, your brothers?"

"Frankie's six and Pat is four. I'm eleven," Ruthie adds, as if it's an afterthought. "There was two more in between me and Frankie that died."

"I'm very sorry," Phyllis says, but Ruthie shrugs.

"I don't remember 'em. I was too little. Anyways, they're better off where they are. Who'd want to be a poor kid in New York? You know who says it's the greatest city in the world? Rich old guys, that's who."

"Mmm," Phyllis says noncommittally, wondering what Ruthie and Lord Grantham would make of each other. She suspects Ruthie would probably be more than a match for his Lordship.

Ruthie gives her an assessing up-and-down look from hat to shoes. "Talking about people being dead, what're you always wearing black for? Someone in your family die?"

"I hope not," Phyllis says. "This is what I wear for my work."

"What kind of work?" Ruthie asks, with an air of interviewing Phyllis for a new position.

"I'm lady's maid to Cora Crawley, the Countess of Grantham."

"Her maid? Like you clean her toilets?"

"No," Phyllis says, torn between being amused and mildly offended. "I do her hair and help her dress, and look after her clothes and such."

"Oh," Ruthie says. "Well, there wouldn't be nothing wrong with it if you did clean toilets. It's a job and someone's gotta do it, am I right?"

"I suppose so," Phyllis says. She did, in fact, spend a few years emptying chamber pots and doing other dirty tasks when she first entered service at an age not much older than Ruthie is now, but it isn't something she cares to dwell on. "Are you ready for your lunch? I'm told there's a pushcart in Columbus Circle that sells hot dogs, but I don't know which way to go from here without looking at a map. Do you?"

"Of course," Ruthie says as if Phyllis has insulted her. "It's only back along Fifty-Third and then a right on Eighth Avenue. Only you got to be the one who talks to the guy. If I get too close he'll think I'm gonna swipe something."

This seems like a good opening to talk about stealing, but Phyllis thinks Ruthie will be more receptive once her stomach is full, so she lets herself be led through the streets until Columbus Circle looms up ahead: a huge, bustling traffic roundabout with a statue and an ugly yellow hotel in the middle and billboards all around, advertising things like Ford automobiles and Uneeda Biscuits. Just beyond it, past a crisscrossing maze of trolley tracks, lies the green vista of the park, shimmering like a mirage in the heat, and outside its entrance, a pushcart just where Calvin said it would be.

There's already a long queue of people waiting, and when they finally make their way to the front, Phyllis buys two hot dogs for Ruthie and declines one for herself—they smell surprisingly good, and she's hungry, but it feels uncouth and somehow suggestive to stand on a public street corner eating a sausage. Ruthie, with no such qualms burdening her, gobbles down her meal, tosses the fluted paper wrappers onto the pavement and wipes a hand across the back of her mouth, smearing shiny grease over her face.

"Is that enough?" Phyllis bends down to retrieve the wrappers and drops them into the nearest green-painted metal bin. "Do you want more?"

Ruthie looks longingly at the cart. "Yeah, but I might puke. It happens sometimes when you ain't eaten in a while, and those hot dogs were so good I don't want 'em to go to waste."

"Maybe later," Phyllis suggests, and Ruthie nods.

"We can talk if you want, like you said yesterday, but we gotta go into the park. I don't wanna be this close to the street in case someone—in case I see someone I know."

They walk a little way and find a bench in the shade of a tree, and Phyllis sits down and gestures to Ruthie to join her, which she does tentatively, sitting at the far end in case Phyllis suddenly reveals herself to be a kidnapper.

"So," she says with studied nonchalance. "What do you wanna talk about?"

"I want to talk about you," Phyllis says.

"Not much to say." Ruthie looks cagey, as if she's already making up lies in her head to answer whatever Phyllis might ask. She doubles her skinny bare legs back under the bench, ready to jump up and run for it at any moment.

"I think there is. I want to know why you're trying to steal from people."

"Why do you think?" The expression on Ruthie's face shifts from wary to disgusted. "I need money. The kids and I gotta eat, and—I just need it, that's all. Not once a week when Auntie Jess comes home and tosses me some change, but on the regular. I got bills to pay."

"You're eleven years old," Phyllis says. "What bills have you got to pay?"

"That's my business," Ruthie fires back. "God, you're a nosy bitch."

Phyllis has been called much worse in her life, but that doesn't stop the insult from stinging. "Is that any way to speak to someone who's trying to help you?"

"I don't need help!" Ruthie jumps up, flushed with anger, and Phyllis sees tears in her eyes. "I don't need it and I don't want it."

"Don't you? You ought to be at school, Ruthie, not lifting people's purses."

"Oh, you think so? How old were you when _you_ quit going to school?"

"Twelve," Phyllis says. "But that was a long time ago and things were different then. And lots of people who left school at the same age I did ended up regretting it." If only Molesley or Daisy were here, she thinks, they could make a much better job of this than she can. Both of them are such champions of education that just listening to them talk makes Phyllis wonder if she ought to sit a few exams herself.

"Sit down," she says, and Ruthie sits, apparently having had at least some training in obeying her elders. "Never mind school for now. It's the thieving that's a bigger problem. I meant what I said before, you know. You _will_ go to prison if you keep it up—maybe not straight away, but soon enough—and that's something that will follow you for the rest of your life, Ruthie. When you're there, you'll be shut up all day and all night with people who have done worse things than you can possibly imagine, and you won't be able to escape even inside your own head, because there will always be someone shouting at you to wake up or eat or walk round the exercise yard. And then even after you've been released, you'll take it with you everyplace you go, always frightened that someone will find out, always dreaming you're back there again. Do you want that? Really?"

"You're lying," Ruthie says, and the tears spill over and make streaks down her dirty face. "Look at you. You work for some fancy rich lady. You got money and nice clothes. You don't know nothing about prison."

"I do, Ruthie."

"Shut up! You don't!" Ruthie is on her feet again, backing away, and people strolling along the park's paths are beginning to stare at the spectacle of a dirty urchin shouting at a woman who is too well-dressed to be her mother. "You don't know nothing about it, and you don't know nothing about me." And with that, she turns and runs, the soles of her mangled shoes kicking up a cloud of dust and gravel as she goes, leaving Phyllis alone and defeated on the bench.


	5. Chapter 5

Phyllis doesn't dare try running after Ruthie in the crushing heat—she can hardly even believe that Ruthie is managing to maintain such a speed under these conditions—but she walks as quickly as she can back to the park entrance and scans the crowds in every direction, looking for any sign of a scrawny girl in a blue dress. There's an endless stream of men with turned-up shirtsleeves, women pushing crying babies in prams, tourists of both sexes consulting maps, and tired, overheated children begging for ice creams, but Ruthie is nowhere to be seen. Sunlight reflects off glittering specks in the pavement and makes Phyllis's eyes hurt, and at last she gives up and heads toward the Plaza, which she can just see in the distance at the end of Fifty-Ninth Street.

Back in the relative coolness of her room, she draws the heavy curtains and lies down on the bed, freshly made up by a hardworking chambermaid, to recover herself and think about what has just happened. Of course she had known going in that Ruthie might not eagerly listen to her and agree to behave better in future, but she had expected any negative reaction to come in the form of impertinence, not tears and anger. And fear, because the child had looked frightened too, hadn't she? Yes, she had, and not only of Phyllis's description of life in prison, but of some other, indefinable thing as well.

Phyllis rolls over and buries her face in one of the bed's gold-tasseled decorative pillows to muffle a frustrated noise. At least she's tried, she tells herself. Perhaps some of what she's said will plant a seed in Ruthie's head and make a difference in the future. Surely it must be better than having done nothing at all, mustn't it?

After a bit, she dutifully gets up and goes on with her work, but that night she pours the whole story out to Molesley in another long letter, even though she knows her last isn't even on a ship yet and the two will probably arrive in the same post. She fills both sides of three pages, and then remembering what Calvin said about wanting to receive love letters, closes with the tenderest expressions of affection she is brave enough to commit to paper. The thought of Molesley reading these words, and hopefully being pleased by them, does make her feel a bit happier, though not enough to completely banish the lingering sensation of guilt and failure.

Luckily, she doesn't have time to brood about any of it too much, because preparations for their decampment to Newport are now in full swing, and she needs to finish cleaning and packing Cora's clothes for the journey. Not trusting the hotel laundry, she sends the washing over to the Levinsons' house to be done there, but the humidity is so relentless that it takes a full two days for it to dry, and she finally has to help the Levinsons' laundry maid press the last of the moisture out of the heaviest garments with hot irons so she can put them into the trunks. Their party is scheduled to set out at eight in the morning on Friday, and it isn't until late the night before that she clasps the last valise and adds it to the stack in her room, waiting to be collected by a bellman.

There's been a plan brewing at the back of her mind throughout the packing, and at midnight, dressed for bed at last, she takes out a sheet of writing paper—she'll have to buy more soon, she has written so much to Molesley—and sits down to implement it. During the walk to Columbus Circle, she told Ruthie that she and her Ladyship were staying at the Plaza, and it occurs to her that if the girl has second thoughts, she may try to enquire there. She has no idea how well Ruthie can read, if at all, so she keeps her message as simple as possible, and leaves out any direct references to what they discussed in case the girl asks someone to read it to her.

 _Dear Ruthie,_

 _I'm very sorry I upset you. I only meant to help. I hope you'll think about what I said and take it to heart._

 _I'm enclosing something for you and your little brothers. Look after them, and yourself._

 _Your friend,_

 _Phyllis Baxter_

Phyllis takes two crisp, new ten-dollar bank notes—which after consultation with Calvin, she has determined is enough to be a genuine help to Ruthie, but not so much that it will attract the wrong sort of attention or be difficult for her to change in a shop—and folds the paper round them. It's a significant amount of money for her as well, even though Lady Grantham pays her a generous salary, but she wants to be certain that Ruthie and her unseen siblings will at least have food for a while. She has considered asking Cora if Mrs Levinson might be willing to give Ruthie a proper job, but even if she knew where to find the girl, she doesn't know if Mrs Levinson would agree, or if children of Ruthie's age are even allowed to work as domestics in America. There are smaller boys and girls selling newspapers and sweets on street corners and train platforms, but the youngest servant in the Levinsons' house is a sixteen-year-old housemaid.

She sighs, seals an envelope with the letter and money inside, and writes _Miss Ruthie Kelly_ on the front. She will leave it at the hotel desk on her way out in the morning, with instructions to give it to Ruthie if the child should happen to come looking for her. It's anyone's guess whether Ruthie, ragged as she is, will be able to breach the front door of the Plaza without being thrown out on her ear, but Ruthie seems nothing if not resourceful, and that gives Phyllis hope as she settles herself in the car and watches the streets of New York stream past outside her window.

The Levinsons' house in Newport turns out to be more like Downton than anything she's experienced since arriving in America, and the way they live there is reassuringly familiar as well, with garden parties and horseback riding and croquet games on the rolling green lawns. The best thing about it, though, as Cora promised, is the weather. It's still warmer than Phyllis would like, but it's much, much cooler than the city, and when she goes to bed at night, the sea breeze blowing in through the open window is enough to make her shiver and raise gooseflesh on her bare arms, as if she's received a cold kiss from the heart of the ocean.

Being able to sleep through the night without waking up in a pool of sweat leaves her head clearer than it's been for weeks, and she writes to Molesley that she will never again complain about a chilly summer at home. She's writing every evening now, doing her best to tell him about the island and the gulls and the boat regatta and the beautiful homes along Bellevue Avenue, and because she worries her powers of description aren't up to the task, she also buys a stack of hand-coloured picture postcards and tucks one into each envelope so he can see what she is seeing. Molesley, who has finished teaching for the summer and has time on his hands, writes back just as faithfully to tell her about the books he's reading and the roses he's tending and the cake Mrs Patmore gave him to take home last time he walked up to the house. _I wish I could see the roses,_ she writes, _they must smell so sweet,_ and when she slits open an envelope from him some ten days later, a shower of half-dried pink and red rose petals falls out and scatters across the servants' table, drawing a chorus of "ooohs" from the maids seated around her and a grin from Calvin, who is just coming in the door.

All these things are pleasing, and Phyllis is enjoying herself so much more than she did on the first part of their trip that even Lady Grantham, who takes more interest in her servants' happiness than most employers, notices and comments on it with approval.

"I don't know how I got this sandy," she says, brushing helplessly at her skirt as Phyllis pulls out pins and lifts her hat away. "I spent the entire time sitting in a chair on a rug."

"It gets everywhere, milady, no matter what you do. I went for a walk on the beach yesterday, and I'm sure I'll be finding sand in my shoes until Christmas. Here, take it off and I'll give it a proper brushing." Phyllis undoes the buttons and catches the skirt as it falls to the floor. "I have your pink dress laid out for the afternoon."

"Thank you, Baxter." Cora smiles softly down at her. "You're feeling better here than in the city, aren't you? I can tell."

"I am, milady."

"I'm glad." She unbuttons the cuffs of her white silk blouse and then stands still for Phyllis to do the rest. "It really is much more pleasant at this time of year, although I think you'll find New York's much easier to enjoy when we go back next month. The autumn leaves in the park are so pretty, I wouldn't want to go home without seeing them one more time."

"Of course." Phyllis hesitates. "If you don't mind me asking..."

"When might we be going home? It's all right, Baxter, I won't be angry. We'll leave Newport on the first of September—that's when all the summer people go home and the shops and restaurants and hotels begin to close down—and then I think spend another two weeks in the city so I can attend to a few last bits of family business. We should be home well before the end of the month, depending on when we can sail." Cora shoots her a glance full of mischief. "You can write and tell Mr Molesley so, if you like. I'm certain he'll be glad to hear it."

Phyllis tries, but can't quite hold back a smile of her own. "I think he will. But I'm glad we'll have a bit more time in New York too, actually. There are a few things I didn't get to finish doing there, before."

"Oh? Well, I won't pry, but I'm glad that you're glad. Now, which necklace do you think with this dress? Or my cameo pin perhaps?"

After Cora is dressed and off to the dining room for luncheon, Phyllis takes advantage of the quiet while everyone else is eating to slip out and look for Calvin, whom she finds rubbing out spots on the car.

"The salt air's rotten for the finish," he says by way of explanation. "Look at this corrosion here. If I don't stay on top of it every day, it'll eat right through the bumper." He stands up and tucks his polishing cloth into his pocket. "What can I do for you, Miss Baxter? You already finished with lunch?"

"I haven't started yet," Phyllis says. "I wondered if you might drive me over to the shops, where the public phone box is. I need to make a telephone call and I don't want it charged to Mrs Levinson's bill."

"Sure, if you want. They've got guests for lunch, so no one's going anywhere for at least a couple hours." Calvin pulls on his driving gloves and adjusts his cap. "You want to leave right now?"

"Yes, please, if you don't mind."

"Hop in, then." He walks round the car to open the front passenger door for her. "Everything all right?"

"Everything's fine," Phyllis says. "I just want to phone the Plaza to see if Ruthie's been in and got her envelope."

"Ruthie again?" Calvin sighs and starts the motor. "That kid really made an impression on you, didn't she? I'm starting to wish I'd met her, just to see what's so special."

"It's hard to explain."

"Yeah, yeah. I just don't want you to be disappointed. You know it's a long shot that she'll even remember you told her about the Plaza, or try going in there to look for you, or that they'll give her your letter if she does. I wouldn't put money on it at the track, is what I'm saying."

"I know," Phyllis says. "If she doesn't, then she doesn't, but I won't stop trying until I've got to leave."

"I wouldn't expect anything else." He makes a left turn and slides the car deftly into a space between two slower-moving vehicles. "Not that I know you too well, Miss Baxter, but I get the impression you're not someone who gives up on things."

"Not usually," Phyllis says as they pull up across the road from the phone box. "Can you wait here? I'll only be a moment, I promise."

"Take as long as you need." Calvin leans back in his seat, and she climbs out of the car, waits for a group of young men on bicycles to pedal past, and then crosses to the box. While the operator is connecting the call, she watches people going in and out of the shops, thinking how strange it is that she can stand here on an island and speak to someone in a city two hundred miles away. Telephones have existed for longer than she's been alive; she's never experienced a world without them, and yet when she really stops to consider it, they are very nearly magic. She's still pondering this when there's a click at the other end of the line and a woman's voice says "Plaza Hotel."

It takes a few minutes to explain who she is and be connected to someone who knows about the envelope, but when that person comes on and she asks her question, he informs her that no one by the name of Ruthie Kelly has been in, and the envelope is still precisely where it has been since she left. Would she like them to forward it on to her current address? Phyllis declines and asks him to keep holding it there until she comes back to the city in a few weeks, and he says "Very good, madam" and rings off, leaving her to replace the receiver and return to Calvin in the car.

"No luck, huh?" Calvin says upon seeing her face.

"Not yet." Phyllis resettles herself in the front seat, already thinking about the letter she will write to Molesley tonight. "That's all right, though. There's still time."


	6. Chapter 6

As the last week of August begins, summer is clearly in decline: evening is coming on earlier, the afternoon sunlight lies long and golden across the lawns and beaches, and when Phyllis goes out to put a letter into the postbox, a few of the leaves in the gutter are delicately tinged with red. The approaching change of seasons brings on a wave of the homesickness she thought she had left behind in New York, and secretly, she begins marking a cross through each day on the calendar in her diary, counting down the time until they sail for home.

In the interim, she tries phoning the Plaza three more times, and on the third attempt, just two days before their scheduled return to the city, is thrilled to learn that Ruthie has turned up and been given her envelope of money. She had meant to ask the concierge for a description if this happened, to be certain it was the right person, but the note of snobbish horror in the man's voice as he tells her that her "young friend" enquired for her is more than enough confirmation.

She tells Calvin, who shakes his head and laughs, but says he's pleased for her. Tonight, she thinks, she will write to Molesley, who has been worried in his letters. _I love that you are so kind_ , he wrote in response to the story of her second, disastrous meeting with Ruthie, _but please keep safe and don't strain yourself, if not for your own sake, then for mine. I know how you get, Phyllis._ She's had a letter from Thomas as well, which was much more direct: _What are you playing at over there, Phyl? Molesley's been up at the house, fussing at me about you and some little kid you've taken on. I like kids as much as the next person, but you've got to look out for yourself too. P.S. If you need more money to give her, tell me and I'll wire you some. Molesley will too._ At least now she can tell them both that things have been partially resolved.

Her happiness about Ruthie's reappearance carries her through the rest of the day and well into that evening, when she has what she hopes will be her last dinner of fish for a while—she likes it well enough, but they eat an incredible amount of it on this island, and she's had enough of her food staring up at her from the plate. She's still feeling cheerful when Cora comes upstairs to be readied for bed, bearing a piece of news.

"You'll never guess what's happened, Baxter."

"What is it?" Phyllis asks, a bit distracted by hunting for pins in her Ladyship's hair She knows she used twenty of them this morning, she's only been able to find eighteen so far, and she can't start brushing until they've all been accounted for.

"Someone's tried to break into our house in the city."

"Oh my Lord." Phyllis halts the search for a moment, afraid she will pull Cora's hair by accident. "Was anything...taken?"

"It doesn't seem so. Giles telephoned and said that he saw two people hanging about after dark last night, walking up and down the street on the opposite side, but when he went out to speak to them, they'd gone. This morning the cook found a pane in one of the kitchen windows smashed, and it looked as if someone had tried to open the catch by reaching in, but nothing else was disturbed." Cora shrugs. "It isn't the first time. I remember when I was a child, my father had to hire guards for the house once. There'd been a newspaper article about some paintings he'd bought, and it seemed as if everyone in the city who'd ever wanted to be a burglar took a crack at stealing them."

"But will we be safe there?"

"Yes, of course. Giles has it all in hand, and we can always have Calvin live in for a while instead of going home at night, to be an extra man around the place."

Phyllis, who knows that Calvin looks after his sister and her children when he isn't driving Mrs Levinson's cars, doesn't think he'll be best pleased by this new requirement, but holds her tongue. "Of course, milady, I'm sure Mr Giles knows what to do." She finds the nineteenth pin and pulls it out gently, holding onto the strands of hair around it. "Only it worries me to think of someone lurking about and trying to get in. If they had a knife, or..."

"Really, Baxter. I'm sure it was just a clumsy attempt at a smash-and-grab that didn't end up going anywhere. And I don't like to say it, but you of all people ought to know that not every thief is a murderer too."

This is uncharacteristically unkind for her Ladyship, and Phyllis has to bend closer over her work to hide the tears it's brought to her eyes. "Yes, of course."

"Oh Baxter, I'm sorry." Cora turns in her seat and looks up, her face full of mingled guilt and embarrassment. "I didn't mean that. I'm in a bad temper, that's all. My brother and I have been quarreling about this stupid inheritance business again, and I'm at the point of just signing my interest over to him and putting an end to it that way. I've been away too long, and I miss his Lordship and the children, and—"

"It's all right, milady. I understand."

"I hope so." Cora gives her an affectionate little pat on the arm. "I couldn't do without you, Baxter. You're my only real friend here, you know. We've got to stick together to get through these next few weeks, and then we can go home and everything will be all right." She turns back to the dressing table, picks up her hand-cream jar and opens it, releasing a wave of sweet almond scent. "I meant to tell you, I'm running awfully low on this."

"I'll make some more for you as soon as we get home," Phyllis says, finally locating the elusive twentieth hairpin and pulling it free.

"Not right away, of course. You'll want to get settled in first. Will you rub this in for me? You do it so much better than I can." She holds out both hands with a winsome smile, clearly laying on a little flattery to make up for her sharp remark, and Phyllis draws up a chair opposite her and starts kneading the cream into Cora's left hand. Her Ladyship is only seven or eight years Phyllis's senior, but she already has the beginnings of arthritis, and Phyllis is well used to massaging her aching fingers at bedtime.

"What will you do first when we're back, milady? After you've seen his Lordship and the children, that is."

"Mmm, I think I'll probably go to the hospital and see how they're getting on. I've had letters from Mrs Crawley and Dr Clarkson, of course, but you can only tell so much from a letter, can't you? And then I'd like a few quiet days of sitting still in my own house and pretending I'm an orphan with no family at all." She laughs. "What about you, Baxter? What will you do first?"

"Well, I'm sure the first thing I'll have to do is explain to Mrs Patmore that I haven't got any film stars' autographs for her," Phyllis says, smiling. "And then we'll see."

"Does 'we'll see' include a visit to Molesley?" Cora grimaces and draws in a harsh breath as Phyllis goes to work on the fingers of her other hand. "No, don't stop. It does hurt, but in a good way."

"All right, just tell me if it starts hurting in a bad way. Yes, of course I'll pay a visit to Mr Molesley. We've been writing, but as you say, letters aren't the same."

"Don't you think it's time for the two of you to move things forward?" Cora enquires. "I mean, it isn't any of my business, and I don't mean to pry, but I always thought you seemed so fond of one another..."

"You didn't think wrong, milady." Phyllis finishes massaging and holds Cora's hands between hers for a moment, warming them, before letting go. "I suppose—well, I suppose we've just been content with the understanding that we have."

"You've been content with it, you mean," Cora says. "Are you certain he has?"

The conversation ends there, but it's still on Phyllis's mind when she sits down to write her letter to Molesley. She's been more openly passionate in her letters than she ever is in person, and he's seemed pleased, but she hasn't really thought of it as moving things in any particular direction, only as a reflection of how much she misses him. Does he want to move forward? Does she? It seems too difficult a question to address from thousands of miles away, so instead she sets out to catch him up on the news of the day, as she usually does. She hesitates over including the story of the attempted burglary, as she thinks it may worry him needlessly, but at last decides at least to mention it in the interest of truthfulness.

 _Her Ladyship says that someone tried to break into Mrs Levinson's house in the city last night. Nothing was taken and there was no real damage, only a broken windowpane. She says it's nothing to worry about, so I intend not to worry. I do have some good news too, my little cutpurse Ruthie has finally turned up at the Plaza and they've given her the envelope with the money! She must have come only two or three days ago because I last telephoned on Saturday and_

Phyllis stops, a sudden horrible thought crossing her mind. Is it possible that there's some sort of connection between Ruthie appearing at the Plaza and the break-in at the Levinsons' house? There can't be, can there? She told Ruthie about the hotel, but not about the house or who Lady Grantham had come to see in New York, and she can't see how Ruthie could have found out. Even if she had, lifting purses on the street is a completely different level of crime from breaking and entering, and surely Mr Giles, the Levinsons' butler, would have mentioned it if one of the mysterious people lingering outside had been an underfed child. It _can't_ have anything to do with Ruthie, and yet she finds herself feeling a sort of sick unease about it.

Looking down at her letter, she sees that she's left the nib of the pen resting on the page too long and made an ugly blot, not unlike the blot that this new idea has made on her evening. For once she doesn't have to ask herself what Molesley would say. He has already said it to her, years ago: she is going to have to tell her Ladyship about it, no matter how little she wants to. It goes against her deeply held sense of privacy, which she knows can slip over the line into secrecy at times, and she dreads causing trouble for Ruthie after trying so hard to help her, but she knows it will be much worse if she doesn't say anything and Ruthie turns out to be involved somehow.

Her mind made up, she crumples the ink-stained letter and throws it into the bin. She'll start over in the morning with a clean page, where she can tell Molesley that she has already done the right thing. With a bit of luck, it will all turn out to be nothing anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

Phyllis spends the night drifting in and out of a thin sleep, waking up every hour and checking the clock only to find that morning is still ages away. At dawn, she gives up, gets out of bed and goes quietly to the window, where she discovers that a thick grey fog has crept in from the ocean and blanketed the house and grounds. Through it, she can just make out the pale illuminated circles that are the lights of the Bellevue Avenue street lamps, standing sentinel on the other side of the stone wall with its high iron gates. It's a bleak scene, and it makes her feel forlorn and abandoned, marooned on the only bit of solid ground for miles. Shuddering, she turns away from the sight and begins dressing.

She can, in theory, go into her Ladyship's bedroom before being summoned, but she forces herself to wait until the bell rings and she can take in the breakfast tray as usual. Cora is still slow and languid and heavy-eyed with sleep, and Phyllis hates to spring this news on her before she's woken up properly, but she can't bear to wait any longer. She settles the tray over Cora's lap, steps back and folds her hands in front of her.

"There's something I need to tell you, milady."

"Oh?" Cora is busy buttering a triangle of toast and isn't really paying attention, but Phyllis pushes on anyway.

"It's something that happened just before we left New York. I'm worried that it might be connected to the break-in attempt."

This makes Cora put the heavy silver butter knife down at once and look up at Phyllis, her clear blue eyes wide and shocked. "You are? What on earth is it?"

Phyllis explains as succinctly as possible, from her collision with Ruthie on the street to her last phone call to the Plaza. Cora listens to the story with a tight little frown that makes her forehead wrinkle, and at the end of it says, "Well, Baxter, I can't say I approve of you getting involved with a child like that, but I do see why you felt sorry for her. Are you certain you didn't tell her anything about the house, or mention my family's name?"

"I'm absolutely positive, milady. I told her we were staying at the Plaza, and I left the envelope for her at the concierge desk. That's all. You don't suppose someone there might have told her the address?"

"I can't imagine that they would have, if she's as you've described her." Cora looks down at her toast and grimaces as if she's completely lost her appetite. "I doubt there's a connection, but I'm glad you've told me, Baxter. My mother or I will speak to Giles later this morning and let him know to keep an eye out. I wish I had known last night so I could have telephoned him before I went to bed. Why didn't you say something then?"

"I didn't think of it until later, milady. I was writing a letter to Mr Molesley, telling him that Ruthie had got the envelope, and suddenly it all fell into place in my head." Phyllis bites her lip. "If it does have something to do with her, I'm very sorry."

"Don't be." Cora makes a dismissive gesture. "You did a kind thing. It's not your fault if someone's tried to take advantage of your kindness. Will you go find Snyder and ask her to tell Mrs Levinson that I need to see her, please? She can come in while I'm having my breakfast if she likes."

"Yes, of course."

Phyllis makes a swift retreat, catches the pretty, auburn-haired Miss Snyder coming up the dark servants' staircase with Mrs Levinson's tray, and delivers her Ladyship's message. Miss Snyder, who is every bit as much a complainer as Calvin has said, makes a petulant face and says she's certain that whatever the two ladies are discussing will turn out to be more work for her and Phyllis, but she agrees to pass it on. After she's gone on her way, Phyllis stands on the landing for a moment, torn between going back up to Cora and going down to talk to Calvin, before deciding on the latter. Her Ladyship will ring if she's wanted, and she would really rather not be present for the conversation with Mrs Levinson, whose aggressive bluntness makes her uncomfortable, if she can possibly avoid it.

The Newport house doesn't have an enclosed side yard like Downton, or the New York house for that matter; instead, the kitchen door lets out onto an open area, out of sight of the Levinson family's manicured lawn and flower beds, that's mostly hard-packed dirt with a few stubborn tufts of yellow-green grass growing from it. This is where Calvin tends to the car, and Phyllis finds him there, waging his daily battle against the salt air and its corrosion. The fog is beginning to burn off and let through a white, diluted sunlight, but there's a distinct chill in the air, heralding the advent of autumn.

"Morning, Miss Baxter." Calvin glances up at her with his usual easy smile, and then his face shifts into an expression of surprise. "What's the matter? It's not that Ruthie kid, is it? I thought you were quits with her now that she's got her money."

"It's Ruthie." Phyllis hesitates, wondering how much she should reveal, then remembers that Cora is planning to have Calvin help guard the house and he'll find out soon enough anyway. "At least, I think it's Ruthie."

"You want to tell me about it?" Calvin opens the door on the Duesenberg. "Here, you better sit down. You look shaken up as hell, pardon my language, and it's cold out here."

He gives Phyllis a hand up, and she perches sideways on the sleek leather driver's seat, her feet resting on the running board along the side of the car, and goes through the story again for him. When she's finished, Calvin shakes his head.

"Didn't I say to watch out for that girl?"

"Yes," Phyllis says, and feels the first sting of imminent tears. "Don't remind me. I feel stupid enough already."

"You're not stupid, Miss Baxter. You're nice. Too nice for your own good."

"So I've been told," Phyllis says, hunting in her pocket for a handkerchief.

"Well, this world sure could use more nice people in it, so don't feel bad about that." Calvin pushes his chauffeur's cap back on his head. "What did your boss say she's going to do?"

"She and Mrs Levinson will tell Mr Giles, and after that I don't know. I hope he doesn't ring the police back and tell them to look for Ruthie. She's only a little girl, she'd be terrified if they found her and arrested her." Phyllis remembers her own desperate panic when she understood first that she had been deserted, and then that the police were really going to take her away. She will never forget the manacles being put on her, how hard and cold they had been, and how the detective sergeant had ratcheted them down cruelly tight to fit her thin wrists. How small will they need to be for Ruthie, she wonders, and has to press a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.

"Hush, don't do that." Calvin looks around quickly. "Mrs Levinson's pretty open-minded as rich white ladies go, and Rhode Island's not Mississippi, but there's still plenty of people here who'll get ugly ideas if they see me with a crying woman. You don't want to get me in trouble, do you?"

"No, of course not." Phyllis takes a quivering breath and pulls herself together. "What do you think will happen?"

"Probably nothing," Calvin says. "New York City cops got better things to do than chase all over the city for one broken windowpane, specially since nothing got stolen. They might send a beat cop around for a few nights to keep an eye on the place in case whoever did it comes back, so if you see the kid, tell her to steer clear, okay?"

"Okay," Phyllis says, imitating him, and manages a slightly watery smile. "Do I sound like an American?"

Calvin snorts with laughter. "Not even a little bit."

"I'll work on it." She holds out her hand to be helped down from the car, and once she's safely on the ground again, smooths out her dress and her hair and puts away the handkerchief. "I'll have to go in and see to her Ladyship now. It was good of you to listen to me."

"Well, I'm no Mr Molesley, but I do my best." Calvin shuts the car door and tips his cap to her, as if she's Cora or Mrs Levinson, and she goes back into the house feeling cautiously optimistic about what lies ahead.

At least for the next day or two, Calvin's prediction that nothing will happen seems to be holding. Cora informs Phyllis that Mr Giles, the butler, says he hasn't seen any children about the place, and that helps Phyllis to relax a little while she finishes the packing and preparations for their return to the city. As Calvin drives them through Newport on the way to the bridge, she can see the proprietors of shops taking down signs and nailing boards over their windows, putting the town to sleep until the tourists and the wealthy homeowners reappear like flowers with the warmth of spring. There's a sense of finality to it, and she wishes this were the end of their voyage as well, and that there weren't another two weeks left to drag out. Cora may want to see the autumn leaves in Central Park, but Phyllis feels she would be just as happy to see them along the path to Downton village.

She settles into her seat and watches the scenery change outside the window, mentally calculating what the time is at home, and wondering what Molesley is doing right now. In his last letter, he wrote that he was planning his lessons and cleaning the schoolroom for the start of the term, and if she closes her eyes, she can picture him there with the children, a little dishevelled and dusty with chalk, but happy and content surrounded by his books and papers. If only she could somehow transport Ruthie there, she thinks, he would be able to teach her so much. It's much more difficult to imagine wild little Ruthie fresh-scrubbed, dressed in new, clean clothes and seated at a desk than it is to imagine Molesley in his element, but she tries, and is pleased with the result. She knows that she can't take Ruthie home with her—that it will be better for Ruthie if the girl stays far away and they never see one another again—but she can't help wishing things were different.

In the back seat, she can hear her Ladyship and Mrs Levinson talking, muffled by the partition so she can only hear one word out of every three or so. She's only half listening anyway, but Mrs Levinson has the sort of voice that carries even when she's trying to be quiet, and so Phyllis's own name jumps out at her when the older woman says it. She starts to turn around, thinking Mrs Levinson is addressing her, but then she hears Cora saying "Shush, Mama," and they descend into whispers. Phyllis looks over at Calvin, wondering if he's heard too, but Calvin shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, and keeps his eyes fixed on the road directly ahead, to indicate she should do the same. Feeling sick, she faces forward and clenches her fingers round the handle on the inside of the door, as if she may need to make an escape while the car is still moving.

 _What are they saying about me?_ she wonders.


	8. Chapter 8

The remainder of the journey passes mostly in silence. Mrs Levinson puts on a pink satin eyeshade, rests her head against the car's rear window, and appears to fall asleep with her hands folded in her lap, while Lady Grantham opens a book. Phyllis, who isn't allowed to sleep while she's on duty and can't read in a moving car for more than a few minutes without getting sick, is left alone with her thoughts, which are dark and roiling. She doesn't know whether Mrs Levinson knows about her past—she doesn't think Cora has told even Lord Grantham about it, but might she have felt these circumstances warrant an exception? Is Mrs Levinson filling Cora's ears with poison, suggesting that her thieving lady's maid must be in league with these other would-be thieves? Even Phyllis's own father had said _Once a thief, always a thief_ when he refused to see her after she was released from prison.

By the time they stop for a late lunch, she's nearly in tears with worry, but both Cora and Mrs Levinson behave so normally toward her that it eases her mind a bit. She and Calvin eat sandwiches while the two women are dining in the hotel's restaurant, and she shares a little of her apprehension with him, carefully leaving out any reference to her own criminal record. He sympathises, but says that Mrs Levinson isn't one to keep her opinions to herself and that if she really believed Phyllis were involved, she would probably just come out and say so.

"They were talking about me," Phyllis says. "I heard them."

"Yeah, me too, but that doesn't mean they were saying you're guilty. If your boss didn't want someone to hear, it was probably me, not you." Calvin's sitting on the grass outside the car, leaving Phyllis with the front seat to herself, and he closes his eyes and turns his face up to the blue late-summer sky. "Better not borrow trouble, Miss Baxter. 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,' like my grammy used to say."

Phyllis does her best to take this advice, and by the time they're crossing the bridge into Manhattan, with the sun already down and the city glowing before them in a blaze of light, she's feeling fairly steady. It lasts up until they arrive at the Levinsons' house, where Cora has conceded to spend these last two weeks rather than returning to the Plaza, and find it cold, dark and apparently abandoned.

"What on earth?" Cora has wound down the glass partition and is leaning forward from the back seat, craning her neck to look through the windscreen at the dead black squares of windows set in the house's grey stone face. "Where is everyone? Mama, I thought you phoned Giles before we left Newport to tell him we were on our way."

"I did," Mrs Levinson says.

"You don't suppose something else has happened?"

"How should I know? Calvin, shut off the car and go check the doors and windows. If nothing's been disturbed, we'll go in and see what's what."

"Don't you think we ought to have the police come, milady?" Phyllis says in a low voice to Cora, whose face is close enough for Phyllis to smell the sweet scents of her powder and perfume. "As there's been trouble recently, I mean."

"Maybe." Cora sits back in her seat and turns to her mother. "Couldn't Calvin go to one of the neighbours and phone the police instead? I'd feel more comfortable having an officer go inside the house."

"Don't be silly, of course I'm not going to disturb the neighbours over something like this. I'm not speaking to that Durst woman next door at the moment, anyway. If there's no sign of a forced entry then I'm sure it's perfectly safe to go inside. I won't be kept out by some ridiculous burglars who didn't even manage to do their burgling correctly, you can be certain of that." Mrs Levinson flings open the door on her side of the car and gets out just in time to meet Calvin, who is coming back from his mission.

"I don't see any broken windows, ma'am, and all the doors on the ground floor are locked."

"Well, there you go then," Mrs Levinson says. "Come on, let's get inside. Maybe there's someone on duty to look after things, and they just haven't realised we're here yet. You would think with a staff of ten, there'd be at least one person around, even if all the rest of them decided to take an unauthorised night off."

There's a lengthy delay while Calvin begins unstrapping luggage from the car and Mrs Levinson, who has possibly never had to let herself into her own house before, hunts in her carpet bag for the key to the front door. At last she finds it—a heavy, old-fashioned iron thing with ornate scrollwork—and manages to slot it into the lock and admit them all into the foyer, which is illuminated only by the carriage light on the porch.

"Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do," Mrs Levinson says crossly. "I don't know what would possess Giles to leave the house unattended at any time, but especially not now. I'll have a few words to say to him about it when he comes back." She drops the carpet bag on the floor with a thud and looks around, hands on hips. "Where are the damned light switches in this room, anyway?"

"There's one here, ma'am." Phyllis flips it up and the overhead chandelier springs to life, crystal drops shivering in the breeze from the open door.

"At least someone in this house knows how to make themselves useful," Mrs Levinson says. "You may as well close the door too. We'll be standing here all night if we wait for Giles to appear out of thin air and do it."

Phyllis closes the door, turning the key on the inside of the lock for good measure, and Mrs Levinson says, "That's a start. I wonder what we can do about supper, if Mrs Hatch has wandered off with all the rest. I don't suppose you know how to cook, do you, Baxter?"

"I've never really needed to," says Phyllis. She glances at Cora rather desperately, hoping she's not about to be pressed into service in the kitchen—where her vague memories of helping her mother more than thirty years ago are unlikely to do much good—and Cora steps in and says, "Leave her alone, Mama, it isn't her job to cook. I'm sure we can find some cold leftovers in the icebox, and if we can't, there's always tea and biscuits."

"I suppose so," Mrs Levinson says. "I think I'll go up to my room first and make sure everything's as I left it. I wish we'd been able to bring Snyder along in the car instead of sending her down with your brother, but I'm sure Baxter here will do well enough for one night. I wonder what's keeping Calvin with the luggage?"

"There's a lot of it, and he's only one person." Cora points out. "Go on up. Baxter and I will look in the kitchen, won't we, Baxter?"

"Yes, milady."

Mrs Levinson makes her way slowly up the stairs, one manicured and be-ringed hand clutching the banister, and as soon as she's out of sight, Cora turns to Phyllis with an exasperated face. Her Ladyship looks utterly exhausted, Phyllis realises: the fine porcelain skin is drawn thin and taut like parchment over her cheekbones, and there are blue-black circles under her eyes.

"Two more weeks," she says grimly. "We're going to survive them, aren't we?"

"Of course we are," Phyllis assures her, and Cora smiles a little.

"That's the spirit, Baxter. Now let's go see what we can do about something to eat. I wouldn't admit it to just anyone, but I actually do know how to cook a bit. They made us learn when I was at boarding school. It was supposed to be good for our characters to know how to make scrambled eggs, as I recall."

Cora turns toward the back of the house, where the kitchen is located, and Phyllis starts to follow her, but is stopped by a knock at the door.

"Oh, that must be Calvin coming with the luggage," she says. "May I go and let him in, milady?"

"Yes, of course." Cora waves her on, and Phyllis crosses the foyer and undoes the lock again. Through the coloured glass panels on the door, she can't see anything but light and blurred shapes, but she is so certain of finding Calvin on the step that it takes her a beat after the door opens to realise she is looking at a small, bedraggled, familiar shape in a blue dress instead.

"Oh my God," she says blankly. "Ruthie, no, you can't be here, you've got to go—"

Ruthie stands there framed by the night, with her legs apart and fists clenched at her sides. Her lower lip is split and scabbed over, and there's a lurid purple bruise along the line of one cheekbone, but her eyes are fierce and burning as she stares up into Phyllis's face.

"Shut the door, Miss Baxter," she whispers.

"What?"

"Shut the door _._ Do it quick, do it _now_." As her voice rises on the last word, Phyllis suddenly understands what is about to happen and starts to swing the door closed, but she's not fast enough to stop the big man who appears from the shadows to Ruthie's left and shoves his arms out straight to stop it closing. Quick as a cat, Ruthie grabs one of those arms, yanks it down and sinks her teeth into it, making the man shout out hoarsely and pull back, and in that instant of distraction, Phyllis throws her whole body against the door, trying to force it shut before he returns. At the other end of the foyer, Cora draws in a sharp, audible gasp, and then she comes running—something Phyllis has never known her Ladyship to do before—and adds her own weight to the effort. Together they manage to close the gap a little, but now the man outside is pushing back again with terrifying strength; Cora's high-heeled patent leather pumps are slipping on the parquet floor, and Phyllis knows they're losing the battle.

Abruptly the door flies open all the way, hitting Phyllis square in the chest and sending both her and Cora sprawling, and the big man steps over the threshold in heavy, dirty boots, clutching a set of bleeding bite marks on his wrist. Behind him are a petite woman with bobbed chestnut hair and a hard but pretty face, and another man, balding and less muscular than his friend, but making up for it with a long, wicked-looking knife in one hand. Ruthie is nowhere in sight at first, and then Phyllis sees her small body crumpled on the front step, as if she's fallen or been pushed. She wants to get up and help the child, but she's winded and sick from being struck by the door, and it's all she can do to lie there and focus on taking one breath after another.

Cora, who was partially behind her and received a much lighter blow, recovers faster and sits up, tucking her skirt in around her knees.

"I don't know who you are," she says coldly, "but I suggest you leave at once." It's her haughtiest, most aristocratic voice of command, but the big man, unaffected, looks down at her as if she's no more than an unpleasant stain on the floor.

"We'll leave when we got what we came for," he says.

"And what might that be?"

"None of your business," he says. "This ain't your house, is it?"

"It's my family's house," Cora says defiantly. "It belongs to my brother and my mother."

"Oh, that's right," he says, and turns to speak to the man with the knife. "The brother ain't here, but the old lady's upstairs. I saw her light go on. You better get up there and make sure she don't try to call nobody. Pull the phone out of the wall if you need to. Where's Henry?"

"He's outside taking care of the chauffeur," the woman says, as the man with the knife heads toward the staircase. "I told him not to kill him or nothing, just hit him hard enough to put him out of commission for a while."

The big man shrugs. "Don't matter if he kills him or not, but whatever you want, Jess."

 _So that's Auntie Jess_ , Phyllis thinks. Ruthie is darker and has a different shape to her nose and mouth, but she can see the resemblance between them in Jess's hazel eyes and the defiant set of her chin. Outside on the step, she can see Ruthie stirring, sitting up and putting one hand to her head, and she feels a warm wash of relief that the girl isn't seriously hurt, followed by a stab of fear as another man, this one thin and fair and dressed in a brown corduroy jacket that looks too big for him, appears behind her and hauls her up by one skinny arm. Ruthie struggles feebly, but the fight hasn't come back into her yet, and she's propelled into the house and shoved to the floor near Phyllis and Cora.

"I got the driver, Mickey," he says to the big man. "Tossed him in the car and moved it around the side of the house. I pulled out a couple fuses too, just to make sure he can't drive off if he wakes up."

"Good one," Mickey says, and claps him on the shoulder. "You got your piece?"

"Yeah." Henry pats the pocket of his jacket, where there is an ominous bulge. "That's what I hit him with."

"Okay. Take these two gals somewhere to keep 'em safe while we gather stuff up. Gotta keep 'em separated from the old lady; too many together and they might get ideas about fighting back."

"Any place particular you want me to put 'em?"

"That storeroom we saw at the back of the house next to the kitchen should be all right. May as well stick the kid in there too until we're done, she'll just try to interfere if we keep her with us." He glares at Ruthie. "I'm gonna get you good for biting me, you little bitch. That smack upside the head was just the start."

"Go to hell," Ruthie fires back at him.

"Talk as tough as you want, kid, just remember what I told you before we came." He turns to Ruthie's aunt, who has been watching the entire exchange disinterestedly. "Come on, Jess. We can wrap this up and be on our way in no time if we hurry."

"Get up, you two," Henry says to Phyllis and Cora. "You ain't gonna get hurt if you do what you're told. Come on!"

Cora rises to her feet, and Phyllis follows suit more slowly. She's still too dazed to be really frightened for herself, but she knows she needs to protect Ruthie, and she's worried about Calvin, lying unconscious in the car. What if he is bleeding to death or dying of a head injury, there out of sight where no one can find him and help him? She looks over at Cora to make certain she, at least, is all right, and her Ladyship reaches out and links her arm firmly through Phyllis's arm.

"Come along, Baxter. You too, Ruthie." Cora extends her free hand, still in its white lace summer glove, to Ruthie, who reaches up to take it. There are black half-moons of ground-in dirt under Ruthie's nails, but Cora doesn't seem to notice, clasping Ruthie's hand as if she is one of Cora's own daughters. "We'll do as he says and everything will be all right."

 _I hope so_ , Phyllis thinks, but she squares her shoulders and walks with Ruthie and her Ladyship into the dark depths of the house, Henry following so close behind them that she can feel his breath on the back of her neck.


	9. Chapter 9

The storeroom Mickey spoke of turns out to house the boiler for the kitchen, as well as tins of tomatoes and beans, baskets heaped with onions and potatoes, and massive burlap sacks of sugar, flour and rice. There's little extra room for two women and a half-grown girl, but Henry herds them in anyway, prodding Ruthie hard in the back when she balks and snarls at him, then reaches up and unscrews the cold lightbulb from the white-painted, rust-speckled ring that holds it.

"Is that absolutely necessary?" Cora says sharply. "I assume you're planning to shut us in, so why not at least leave us some light?"

"You don't need no light to sit in here and wait," Henry says, and slams the door. There's a jingle of keys, the lock clicks, and then they hear the tramp of footsteps as he walks away, presumably to rejoin Mickey and Jess in the foyer. As soon as he's out of earshot, Ruthie loses all her fierce defiance, flings herself into Phyllis's arms, and bursts into harsh, painful sobs like the child she still is.

"I didn't mean for 'em to find out about you, Miss Baxter. Pat found your money hid in our mattress when he was playing and showed it to Auntie Jess. Frankie told him not to, but Pat's only little and he didn't listen. Auntie Jess told Mickey and then the both of 'em whaled on me until I told where I got it."

"It's all right." Phyllis smooths Ruthie's tangled hair tenderly. There's a small casement window set high in the storeroom's wall, letting in just enough moonlight for her to see the girl's shadowy outline. "You couldn't help it."

"Who is Mickey?" Cora puts in. "He seems to be in charge of this...whatever it is."

Ruthie turns her face blindly from side to side against Phyllis's breast, smearing tears and snot all over the bodice of her dress, and moves away a little from the protective circle of her arms. "He's Auntie Jess's boyfriend. He don't live with us, but you wouldn't know it, the way he sits around the place in his fuckin' undershorts and eats whatever food I get for the kids. He and Jess both do all kinds of stuff to make a living. They taught me to dip for wallets and purses like I done to you, Miss Baxter, only I ain't so good at it yet. I'm sposed to bring 'em whatever money I get, that's why they were so mad when they found out about that twenty bucks."

Horrified, Phyllis opens her mouth to tell Ruthie she can't use such coarse language in front of Lady Grantham, but is cut off by Cora, who passes right over it as if she hasn't even heard. "And how did you find this house? Miss Baxter says she didn't tell you about it."

"No, she never," Ruthie says. "But Mickey said if she worked for an English lady who was staying at the Plaza, that lady must be rich, and rich people pal around with other rich people, am I right?"

"Generally," Cora says. "Go on."

"He said there were ways to find stuff out, and he went and got Auntie Jess a set of nice clothes from somewhere. Snuck in the funeral parlour and stole 'em off a dead person, most likely. Jess can put on airs when she wants to, so she got dressed up and went to the Plaza and talked to that guy at the front, you know, the stuck-up one who acts like he's God's gift and you might as well go eat worms?"

"Who?" Cora asks, genuinely puzzled.

"The concierge, milady," Phyllis says. "He gets a bit snippy with non-paying guests."

"Yeah, him. I dunno what she said, but she got him to tell her who you were and give her the address they had for you in the city, and she and Mickey checked it out and then came back later with me and Pat. They wanted Pat to climb in the kitchen window 'cause he's the littlest, but they were scared he wouldn't be able to unlock the door once he was in. He locks himself in the toilet in our building about twice a week." Ruthie's crying again; she wipes her bare arm across her face with a wet snuffling sound, and Phyllis silently removes her handkerchief from her pocket and holds it up for Ruthie to blow her nose. "They tried to make me do it instead, but I ran and hid and watched them. They went away after a while and I thought they gave up, but it turns out they been planning this instead. I hate them."

"It's not your fault," Phyllis assures her.

"You were right too, Miss Baxter." Now Ruthie's voice is full of a hurt, weary betrayal, as if this is just the latest disappointment in a long chain that began with her birth, and that she expects to continue until her dying day. "About prison. They didn't just bring me along so you'd open the door, they did it to make me be part of it. If I tell on 'em after, or lead the cops to them, I get locked up too. Mickey said."

"We'll see who's going to prison and who isn't," Cora says briskly. "Do you know exactly what they're planning to do out there?"

"Steal stuff. I dunno what, but they got no car, so it'll have to be little stuff they can shove in a bag. Money, maybe, or jewels."

This makes Phyllis flinch, remembering the long-ago morning when she'd dropped those glittering rings and bracelets into her pockets, how she'd felt frightened and guilty and excited at the same time, dreaming about the future she'd have once she and Coyle were safely away. She wonders if Jess thinks that Mickey will marry her and give her a beautiful life with the spoils of their robbery. From their brief encounter, she suspects a woman like Jess is more realistic and less trusting than a lovesick Phyllis Baxter, drunk on her recent discovery of sex and the thrill of being wanted by someone so handsome, but stranger things have happened.

"D'you think there's anything in here we can eat without cooking it?" Ruthie is asking Cora. "Me and Frankie ate raw oatmeal once when we were real hungry. Turns out that's a bad idea."

"I don't know, darling, but you're welcome to look if you like," Cora says, and Ruthie turns and begins pawing through the nearest set of open shelves, sniffing at packets and boxes in the near-dark.

"Milady," Phyllis says quietly, seeing that Ruthie will be occupied for the next little while. Reminiscing about her own past has made her think of something, and she wants Cora's opinion. "Henry had the keys to the storeroom, did you notice?"

"Yes, what about it?" Cora edges closer so Phyllis can speak directly into her ear without alerting Ruthie.

"They belong to the housekeeper," Phyllis says. "Mrs Hughes never takes her keys off her belt from the time she dresses in the morning until she goes to bed at night, and I'm sure Mrs Fletcher doesn't either. How did Henry get them?"

"Oh my God," Cora says. "You don't think they hurt Mrs Fletcher and took them, do you?"

"No," Phyllis says, "I think it's more likely they were given them by someone inside the house, who also arranged for the staff not to be here. They can't possibly have overpowered everyone, even with a gun and a knife. There are too many people on staff for that, and there would be some sign of a struggle. I've seen a person stabbed with a blade before, when—when I was away. It was messy."

"Are the staff all in on it?" Cora sounds shocked.

"I suppose they could be," Phyllis says. "But I was thinking...Mrs Levinson said something about an unauthorised night off, but what if they're actually having an authorised night off because someone told them they could? All of them live out except for Mrs Fletcher, Mr Giles and Miss Snyder, and Miss Snyder won't be here until tomorrow. They might be at home right now, having their tea and thinking everything is all right."

"But if they had all the keys, then why would they use Ruthie to get us to open the door? They could have just let themselves in at any time, and we would have come in to find the house already robbed."

"I don't know, milady," Phyllis says. "Perhaps if we both think on it, we'll come up with the answer."

"We could ask Ruthie," Cora points out. "She seems to be a font of information on all sorts of subjects."

"If she knew, she would have told us already, I think." Phyllis pauses. "I'm really terribly sorry about this, milady. I know you said it wasn't my fault, but if I hadn't got involved..."

"Baxter, I appreciate your willingness to accept the blame, but now really isn't the time to quarrel about it. Let's just try to get through this, all right?"

"Yes, of course," Phyllis says, just as Ruthie concludes her search of the shelves and turns round again, holding a dark, square object clasped in her hands.

"Found a box of raisins," she says thickly, through a sticky mouthful of them. "Anyone want some?"

"That's very generous, but Miss Baxter and I aren't hungry," Cora says.

"Suit yourselves," Ruthie says, and stuffs her mouth again. "What are we talking about? I wasn't paying attention."

"Just..." Cora drifts to a halt, apparently at a loss for words, and Phyllis steps in to help her.

"We were wondering about that window," she says. "It's a bit small, but perhaps if we could get up to it, we could crawl through and jump."

"Oh, that? If I climb up on the water tank I bet I can get it open," Ruthie says, and sets aside her raisins on the nearest shelf. "Someone gimme a boost."

Cora seems confused by this, but Phyllis, who often played out as a child and has watched boys scale walls and fences many times, knows exactly what Ruthie means to do. She laces her hands together and Ruthie puts a bare foot in the cradle they form, and with that support manages to get hold of the edge of the boiler's casing—carefully avoiding the array of copper pipes sticking out of the top and sides—and pull herself up to kneel with one knee on the tank and one on the windowsill.

"It's not painted shut, is it?" Phyllis asks anxiously, watching Ruthie push at the window. It's easier to see the girl there, limned by the muted light coming through the small rectangular pane, and it's clear she's struggling.

"Nah, just ain't been opened in a long time." Ruthie blows dirt and cobwebs away from the casement and tries again, and this time the window reluctantly inches upward and outward. The hinges let out a rusty shriek, and all three of them freeze, frightened that Henry or Mickey or Jess may be lurking outside the door and hear, but nothing happens. Ruthie leans out precariously through the opening she's created, making Phyllis's chest clench with anxiety, and then both Phyllis and Cora hear her muffled voice, as if she's speaking in low tones to someone outside.

A moment later, she pulls herself back in and looks over her shoulder at them, holding onto the windowsill lightly with one hand.

"Hey Miss Baxter, there's some guy out here says his name is Calvin. You know him?"


	10. Chapter 10

"Oh, thank goodness." Weak with relief, Phyllis leans against a shelf full of glass jam jars that clink together as she jostles them. "Yes, I know Calvin. Her Ladyship and I both do. Is he all right?"

"Hang on." Ruthie puts her head out of the window and speaks quietly again, then pulls back. "He says yeah. Got a big goose egg and a cut on his head, though. Henry must've clocked him a good one. He says he can help us get out this way."

"How far is it to the ground?" Cora asks.

"Not that far. Me and Frankie hang on the bottom of the fire escape and jump off sometimes, and it's not any higher than that. Lower, probably." Ruthie pushes her uneven fringe out of her eyes. "Only there ain't room to turn around up here, so you can't hang off by your hands and drop. You gotta go out headfirst and let him grab you under the armpits and lift you down."

The picture this conjures up is both undignified and embarrassing, but Phyllis doesn't see what other choice they have. "All right. You go first, but be careful. I don't want to see you hurt."

"Don't worry, I done lots more dangerous stuff than this," Ruthie says—a statement that Phyllis finds less than reassuring—and looks out the window again. "You ready to catch me? Okay, here I come." She wriggles out through the opening, vanishing into the crisp, damp night air, and Phyllis hears a grunt from Calvin as he takes her weight into his arms.

"Now you, milady," Phyllis says, but Cora shakes her head.

"I'm not going to fit through that window, Baxter. You might be able to, but I'll never make it, and even if I could, I wouldn't leave the house while my mother is still here. I want you to go with Ruthie and Calvin and get help."

"No!" Phyllis is utterly horrified by the idea of leaving Cora behind. "I can't leave you here on your own. What if they hurt you when they find out we've gone?"

"Yes, well, I'm not too pleased about that possibility either, so be quick, won't you?" Cora says with a half smile that Phyllis can just see in the light from the window.

"But milady—"

"Go on, Baxter. I'm giving you an order. Either do as you're told or resign your position right now."

"She ain't gonna come, Miss Baxter. Quit arguing and get up to to the damn window," Ruthie's small voice hisses from outside, and Phyllis winces at the language, but admits defeat and clambers up onto the water tank with some not-very-effective help from Cora. She's smaller than her Ladyship, but much bigger than Ruthie, and she has to contort herself awkwardly to fit into the space between the tank and the ceiling, but she manages to squash herself in somehow and grip the sill to look through the window. The hard surface of the side yard seems miles below, as do Calvin and Ruthie's anxious, upturned faces, and she has a wrenching moment of vertigo that makes her cling tighter to the wooden frame.

"What're you waiting for?" Ruthie is jittering about with impatience, her bare feet pattering on the paving stones. "It's not far. You can do it."

"I'm coming." Phyllis swallows hard and leans out as much as she can, reaching down until Calvin, who is well over six feet tall, can grab her upper arms with a sturdy, reassuring grip that gives her the courage to keep going. She nearly gets stuck at the hips, but squirms free and slithers through to be caught completely and lowered to the ground. Once there, she sees that Calvin is looking more than a bit the worse for wear: even in the shadows, the wound just above his temple, black with clotted blood, is clearly visible.

"Oh, your poor head," she says softly. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Well, I can't say I've never had a better night, but yeah, more or less." He touches the injury with delicate, probing fingers, and grimaces. "That guy in the brown jacket hit me—didn't knock me out, quite, but it was a while before I could get up. I looked through the front windows and saw him inside with another guy and a lady, so I went down to the next corner to see if I could find a cop, even though Lord knows they'd probably have arrested me too just for the look of it. But there wasn't anyone around, so I came back 'cause I didn't want to leave you alone here with them for too long. They did something to the car so it won't start."

"Henry said he pulled the fuses," Phyllis says, remembering.

"Who's Henry?"

"Pal of Mickey's," Ruthie says. "Jim too. He's the one went upstairs to watch the old lady."

Calvin looks from Ruthie to Phyllis, still feeling gently of his head. "I guess this must be your Ruthie, huh?"

"Yes," Phyllis says. "Her aunt is the woman you saw inside. Mickey is her—her fancy man, I suppose. They brought Ruthie along, but she didn't want to come, did you, Ruthie?"

"Hell no," Ruthie says staunchly. "And I don't want to hang around either. We oughtta go, Miss Baxter, before one of 'em comes outside and sees us. We gotta get to a police station or a phone booth or something."

"I know." Phyllis looks up at the open hole of the window and bites her lip, thinking of Cora inside, alone in the dark. "I hate leaving her Ladyship. If something should happen to her..."

Ruthie comes up beside her and slips a small, hot hand into hers. "She'll be fine. Mickey and Jess ain't gonna hurt her as long as they think they can get money and stuff from her, so let's go quick and get the cops. Me and Calvin need you to make 'em listen. They won't wanna pay attention to either of us."

The idea of speaking to the police for any reason at all makes Phyllis ill with fright, but she squeezes Ruthie's hand. "All right, let's go. Which way?"

Ruthie looks embarrassed. "I don't really know this part of town so good. I just came up to look for people to dip, before."

"Calvin?" Phyllis turns back to the chauffeur and is alarmed to see him sagging against the iron fence that surrounds the side yard, clutching its bars as if he might fall down without support. "Oh my Lord, what is it?"

"Just got dizzy for a second," Calvin says gruffly. "I'm okay now. I think if we just keep going down Fifth, we'll find a cop sooner or later. We can't go to any of the houses right around here. Mrs Levinson wasn't kidding when she said she and the neighbours don't like each other."

"Can you walk that far? Let me see your head." Phyllis brushes aside his attempt to fend her off and leans in to inspect the injury as best she can. "It looks terrible. If we could put some cold water on it..." She reaches into her pocket, remembers that she used her clean handkerchief to mop up Ruthie's runny nose, and pulls her prized silk scarf from round her neck instead. "Isn't there a tap out here?"

"Farther down that way," Calvin says, pointing. "You sure you want to wreck your nice scarf, though?"

"I can get another one. Wait right there."

Silently, she slips along the side of the house, fumbles for the tap in the dark, and opens it just a fraction, holding her breath for fear the pipes will make a noise that brings Mickey and his gang running. There's a fine spray of air and water droplets, and then a thin trickle that Phyllis uses to soak the scarf through. It hurts her a little—she isn't a saint, after all, and it took months of careful saving before she could afford to buy this piece of lovely, flimsy material on a shopping expedition to York—but if she did it once, she can do it again, and if Mickey kills them, it will hardly do her any good to have a silk scarf to wear at her own funeral. Shutting off the tap, she folds the wet, clinging fabric into a neat square and returns to to Calvin, who presses it to his head and draws in a sharp breath of pain.

"I'm all right," he says in response to her worried look. "Just stings at first, kinda. Come on. I can make it now."

Ruthie is too short to reach the latch on the gate, and Calvin is occupied with holding the compress to his head, so Phyllis is the one to reach up, unhook the latch, and ease the gate open for them to walk through one by one. Here in the crowded city, the house has nothing like the sprawling grounds of Mrs Levinson's Newport home, but it is set a little way back from the street with a severely trimmed box hedge running round it, and they have to creep as quietly as they can for several more yards before they reach the pavement. It's late enough in the evening for the endless parade of automobile traffic along Fifth Avenue to have slowed down, but as Phyllis knows from earlier in the summer, there is never a time in New York when it stops altogether. Perhaps, she thinks, they can simply wave down a police car, if they can pick one out from the glare of oncoming headlamps.

"I think we ought to cross the road, don't you?" she says to Calvin, who has come around her and is standing a little distance away on her left. "We don't want them seeing us as we pass the front of the house."

"Pretty sure it's too late for that, Miss Baxter," Calvin says. His voice is oddly tight, as if he's squeezing each word out with an effort, and Phyllis is confused both by his tone and his words until he moves aside enough for her to see Henry's slight shape behind him, gun out and pressed hard into the side of his uniform jacket.

"Oh shit," Ruthie says, disgusted, and for once Phyllis can't bring herself to disapprove of the crude word. It sums up her own feelings exactly.


	11. Chapter 11

They all stand motionless on the pavement for a moment, under the white glow of a carbon-arc streetlamp, with Calvin looking pained, Henry contemptuous, and Ruthie angry. Phyllis can't see her own expression, but if it matches the way she feels inside, she assumes it must be terrified. Two automobiles pass in rapid succession, and their warm backdraft ripples her skirt against her legs; lifts the loose wisps of hair round her face; stirs the dry leaves in the gutter into temporary life. She thinks of simply running out into the middle of Fifth Avenue, screaming and waving her arms for someone to help, but while that might work in sleepy Downton village, here in New York such a course of action would probably end with her being flattened by a car and Henry shooting Calvin anyway.

"I thought I took care of you," Henry says to Calvin, and then he uses a word that once made nine-year-old Phyllis's mother wash her mouth out with a cake of Pears soap. _But everyone says it_ , she'd protested, crying, _even the vicar_ , and her mother had given her another choking, spluttering round with the soap before telling her that it would still be a nasty word if the Queen said it, and that she was to speak politely about everyone no matter what colour they were.

Henry, apparently not having been taught this lesson, calls Calvin a few more unpleasant names and then scowls at Ruthie and Phyllis.

"Where's the other one, Lady Whatshername?"

"She stayed behind," Phyllis says. Her face feels numb and stiff with fear, and she's surprised her voice comes out sounding so normal. The nighttime traffic is still rumbling along, noisy and heavy with petrol fumes, and she wonders what they look like to the motorists inside the cars and the people walking on the other side of the avenue. Even without the presence of Henry's gun, which he is being careful to keep hidden between his body and Calvin's, they must make an odd group: a ragged little girl, a black chauffeur, a middle-aged lady's maid, and a man in rough workman's clothes.

"At least one of you's got some good sense," Henry says. He jabs Calvin in the ribs with the muzzle of the gun. "Alright, everyone back inside."

"I ain't going," Ruthie says, and Henry turns to look at her with an expression that is nearly comical in its surprise.

"What do you mean you ain't going, brat? You're gonna go or I'm gonna shoot you."

"Nuh-uh, you won't." Ruthie's scrawny shape is visibly trembling, but she stands her ground, bare toes curled against the cold concrete as if she's prepared to bolt and run at any minute. "This ain't Hell's Kitchen, this is Fifth Avenue. You shoot someone on the street here and every one of those Rockefellers and Vanderbilts will hear it and get on the horn to the cops, and I wouldn't wanna be you when Mickey finds out. I ain't going and Miss Baxter ain't either." She reaches out and twines her fingers into Phyllis's.

"Ruthie..."

"Her Ladyship said for you to leave." There's a frightening intensity in Ruthie's voice that reminds Phyllis of the day they quarreled in the park. "I heard her. She's your boss and you got to do what she told you. Come on, Miss Baxter, come on, just walk away with me. Calvin can take care of himself."

Phyllis casts a worried glance at Calvin and sees his head is hanging low, his eyes half closed. His hand has dropped limply to his side, and her ruined scarf is just dangling from the tips of his fingers in their driving gloves. She can see something wet glistening on the soft, dark leather, but whether it's water or blood is impossible to discern.

"Calvin," she says, and he makes a muffled snorting noise as if she's awakened him from sleep.

"I'll bring the car around," he says thickly. "Just got to put the wheels back on first. They got lost in the park. Sorry bout that."

"Oh God!" Phyllis looks at Henry. "He needs a doctor. His head..."

"I don't give a fuck about his head." Henry's face is twisted with anger and, Phyllis thinks, with some fear of his own; Ruthie's threat about Mickey must have struck home. "He's coming back inside with me. If you care so much, then come along and play nurse, but one way or the other he's going."

"No!" Ruthie drags at Phyllis's hand. "He'll be all right. We'll get help, but you gotta come with me, the cops won't listen to a kid."

"I can't," Phyllis says, and gently but firmly untangles herself from the web of Ruthie's fingers. "They'll take him inside and throw him into a corner and he'll die before we can come back." She suspects that Calvin may die anyway—even without any medical training, she knows that disorientation and confusion after a head injury are poor signs—but doesn't want to say the words out loud.

"Fine!" Ruthie's face is dry, but Phyllis hears the quiver of tears. "Go on and get yourself killed too. See if I care!" She takes a step away, then another, and then she's fleeing down Fifth Avenue, darting in and out of the pools of light from the street lamps, until the night swallows her up completely.

"Good riddance." Henry unlatches the Levinsons' front gate and gives Calvin a shove with the hand that isn't holding the gun, and Calvin moans and stumbles into Phyllis, who just manages to stop him falling over while staying upright herself. "Get in there, both of you. Up the path to the front door."

"He can barely stand," Phyllis says, indignant. "What makes you think he can walk, let alone climb stairs?"

"Does it look like I care? Figure it out." He points the gun at her, and she flinches and links one arm round Calvin's waist, over his uniform jacket to maintain at least some propriety.

"We'll have to walk," she tells him. "It's only a few steps. Can you do it if I help you?"

"I gotta lay down," Calvin mumbles. "Just for a minute."

"Yes, of course. As soon as we're inside the house." She takes a step, and Calvin takes a wavering one in imitation. One of his feet drags awkwardly behind him, as if he's lost control over it, and Phyllis's heart sinks. She knows Lady Grantham helped her daughters nurse wounded soldiers during the war, so perhaps her Ladyship will know what to do for him if they can only get inside. If they can get inside...if her Ladyship knows what to do...if Ruthie can fetch help...everything at the moment seems to hinge upon an _if_.

 _If wishes were horses, Phyl, then beggars would ride_ , she imagines Thomas saying, with the bitter curl to his lip that can never quite spoil his good looks. She thinks of Thomas white and cold in his bath full of blood, but instead of discouraging her, the image gives her hope. Thomas had seemed certain to die then, but she had helped him and he had lived. She can help Calvin too.

"Will you fucking hurry up?" Henry prods her in the back, and she shivers as she realises that the hard thing digging into her spine is the gun. Objectively, its shape shouldn't feel any more threatening than a stick or a hairbrush handle or a spanner, but it does.

"We're going as fast as we can," she says. The lamplit squares of the house's front windows seem so distant, as if they're at the far end of a corridor that gets longer the farther she goes down it. She fixes her gaze on them and urges Calvin on, stumbling and clinging to her, until they reach the end of the pathway and she helps him up the shallow steps. As soon as they stop outside the front door, he bends forward and is violently sick, just missing Phyllis's shoes.

"Jesus," says Henry in a revolted voice behind them.

"He can't help it." Phyllis dares a look over her shoulder. "I told you, he needs a doctor. It isn't too late to take him to one. You could undo whatever you did to the car, and—"

"Mickey'd have a bird," Henry says roughly. "Open that door and get him inside. He can puke in there all he wants. It ain't my house."

Phyllis pulls the handle, half hoping that the door will be locked and Henry will decide to let them go, and is disappointed when it swings open easily and admits them into the empty foyer. For a moment she thinks that Mickey and Jess and the other man—what had Ruthie called him? Jim, that was it—must have finished what they came to do and left again, but then she hears heavy footsteps and Mickey's big shape appears on the upstairs gallery that runs along the top of the main staircase.

"What's this about?" He gestures at Calvin and Phyllis.

"They tried to get away," Henry says. "I caught 'em outside and brought 'em back for you."

"Where's the kid and that snobby Grantham bitch?"

"Kid's run off. Woman's still in the storeroom far as I know." Henry gives Phyllis another jab, and she draws Calvin further into the foyer and lowers him gently onto a chair. "This one's not feeling so good. Guess I gave him a harder crack on the head than I thought. Miss Lady's Maid here keeps yapping about getting a doctor for him."

"Who needs a doctor?" Jess appears at Mickey's elbow, her hair a bit disarrayed as if she's been doing physical labour.

"Calvin does," Phyllis says before either Mickey or Henry can answer. Her heart is racing, but she lays a hand on Calvin's shoulder and keeps going. "He's been hurt and now he's ill. Please at least let her Ladyship see him. She knows a bit about nursing."

Jess bites her lip, then says something to Mickey in a low voice that makes him bark out a short, sharp laugh.

"Yeah, okay, Jessie. Whatever you want. Henry, take him to the storeroom."

"Not there," Phyllis says. "It's too small. He needs to lie down."

"He can go in there. It's got a couple couches." Jess points at a door on the right side of the foyer, which Phyllis knows from previous visits is the entrance to Mr Levinson's office.

"Thank you," she says. "And her Ladyship?"

"Haul her out and bring her in there too," Mickey says to Henry. "And make sure they can't climb out no windows this time. I ain't got all night to keep catching the little canaries every time they fly away."

Calvin has grown weak enough that Henry has to tuck his gun into the waistband of his trousers—where Phyllis devoutly hopes it will fire by accident and blow off a valuable bit of his anatomy—and help her carry him into the library and lay him out on one of the red leather sofas. She pulls up a wing-backed chair and seats herself beside him to keep watch while Henry slams the door and departs, presumably to fetch Cora. Somewhere far above their heads, she can hear the sounds of people moving about and of faint, muffled voices, and it occurs to her for the first time that Mrs Levinson is still up there, being guarded by Jim with his knife. It's a worrying thought, but even on six weeks' acquaintance, she knows Mrs Levinson well enough to know that the older woman isn't likely to be a frightened, docile hostage, any more than Ruthie was. They are oddly alike in a way, the wealthy lady and the bolshy little girl, though she doesn't suppose either of them would appreciate the comparison.

Calvin makes another snoring, snorting noise, and Phyllis looks down and finds that his eyes are fully closed, his breathing ragged as if pain has followed him even into sleep. The wound on his head is fully clotted and a bruise is forming around it, spreading into his short hair, as blood collects under the skin. She touches the puffy flesh delicately, with just the tips of her fingers, and he twitches, which she takes for a good sign. Surely if he were dying, he would be too deeply unconscious to feel anything.

She thinks of Thomas again, how she had guarded him just like this as he lay wet and bloodied and helpless, and suffers a sudden wave of longing for home, so far away; for Thomas, who lived against all odds; and for Molesley, whom she misses more keenly now than ever. She glances at her wristwatch: it's four in the morning there, and Molesley will be asleep in his cottage, in the bedroom she has never glimpsed, as they do all their talking (and occasional, mostly chaste kissing) downstairs for decency's sake. If she lives through this night and is able to go home, she decides, she is going to take her Ladyship's advice and move things forward; she is going to invite herself up to that unseen bedroom and into his bed and celebrate her survival with vigour.

This is probably not quite what her Ladyship meant, but at the moment Phyllis doesn't care. She tucks a cushion gently under Calvin's head and takes his wrist between her fingers, counting his pulse so she can report it to Cora when she comes. Somehow, she thinks, they will all get out of this alive.


	12. Chapter 12

"What on earth is going on? Why are you taking me here?" Cora's voice outside the office door is muffled and indignant, but Phyllis knows her well enough to hear a tinge of fear overlaying it.

"For Christ's sake, can't none of you ever shut up?" Henry growls. He opens the door and pushes Cora in ahead of him—all in one piece and apparently unmolested—and her Ladyship's eyes go wide at the sight of Calvin stretched out on the sofa and Phyllis in the chair beside him.

"What's happened, Baxter?"

"We were caught before we could get away properly," Phyllis says.

"Did he hit Calvin again?" Cora turns round, and if looks could kill, Henry would be a small, smoking dark blot on the carpet. Instead, he goes on leaning against the wall nearest the door with his arms folded.

"No," Phyllis says wearily. "Calvin was hurt more badly than he thought at first. He's been sick, and he was saying things that didn't make any sense. I thought it must be concussion, but you would know best, milady. Will you look at him? Please?"

Cora bites her lip, then crosses the room, drops to her knees on the thick green-and-gold Oriental rug beside the sofa, and speaks in her gentlest voice, as if she's addressing someone very young or very old. "Calvin, can you hear me? It's Lady Grantham." When no response comes, she lifts one of his eyelids, then the other, revealing the bloodshot sclera and dark brown iris. One of his pupils is blown out to twice its normal size, and Cora exchanges a worried glance with Phyllis, who has abandoned the chair to kneel next to her.

"I think it's worse than a concussion, Baxter. There might be bleeding inside his skull." She looks up at Henry. "If he isn't taken to a hospital, he'll die. He needs an operation to relieve the pressure on his brain."

"He ain't going nowhere," Henry says, "and neither are you. Once Mickey's finished with his business and we're outta here, you can do whatever you want, but until then we're all staying put."

"Well, go and tell Mickey to get on with his business then," Cora says sharply. "Take whatever you want, just hurry up and go."

"We'll go when we're good and ready," Henry says, but he exits the room anyway, locking the door behind him with another key from Mrs Fletcher's purloined ring, and leaving Cora and Phyllis alone with Calvin.

Cora turns to her at once. "Where's Ruthie? Did they hurt her?"

"She ran off." Phyllis hesitates, not really wanting to reveal her own part in the incident, but then decides to make a clean breast of it. "She wanted me to go with her, and I could have done, but I was afraid to leave Calvin behind with Henry. I'm sorry, milady. I ought to have gone for help the way I was told, but—"

"I understand why you did it, Baxter." Cora touches her shoulder in a rare gesture of comfort. "We'll just have to hope that Ruthie isn't too afraid of the police to fetch them."

"Ruthie is brave," Phyllis says, but it's occurred to her that Ruthie's first priority might not be fetching help for semi-strangers, but protecting herself and the brothers she tries so hard to look after. _I'm going to get you good, you little bitch_ is what Mickey said earlier, and the cut and bruised state of Ruthie's face is all the proof anyone needs to know that Mickey has no qualms about hurting children. Might Ruthie not be at whatever squalid rookery passes for her home right now, packing her things and collecting the boys before Mickey can come back? What would Phyllis do in her place?

Just then, Calvin makes a choking noise in his sleep, and Phyllis snatches Mr Levinson's rubbish bin from underneath the desk, upends it in a cascade of crumpled paper, and gets it in place just as Cora rolls him on his side. Calvin's brown skin is ashy grey, and his forehead is covered in a cold, drenching sweat that Phyllis wipes away with Cora's proffered handkerchief as soon as the retching stops. The handkerchief smells of the lavender-and-rose sachet that she makes herself and tucks into the corners of her Ladyship's chest of drawers, but its familiar scent fails to soothe her. She's seen people die before, and Calvin is beginning to have that drawn, sunken skull-like look, as if death is already creeping over him.

"He's getting worse, Baxter," Cora says. She picks up the bin, as unfazed by its contents as any nurse, and tucks it back under the desk again. "I wish they'd go. They've had time to steal everything that isn't nailed down by now. If they don't—"

She breaks off as both of them hear voices approaching the door again. This time it's Mickey's deep growl, overlaid by a sharper, lighter female voice that must belong to Jess, and then, just as the key slides into the lock from the outside, a third strand of pure, wealthy American annoyance that can only herald the arrival of one person.

"I said let _go_ ," Mrs Levinson is saying as the door swings open. She seems to have got as far as taking off her hat and gloves before Mickey and Company burst in on her, but otherwise is still fully dressed, vibrant and showy in the peacock-green travelling suit she wore for the trip down from Newport. The big man who originally forced his way into the house—Jim, that was what Ruthie called him—is just behind her shoulder, holding her by both arms with a grip so tight that Phyllis can see the dents his fingers are making in her flesh. In addition to the bite marks Ruthie left on his wrist, he's now sporting a raked set of scratches down one cheek, an injury for which Phyllis feels no sympathy at all. Good for Mrs Levinson, she thinks, and blots Calvin's forehead with the handkerchief again.

"Mama!" Cora scrambles up from the floor in a most un-countesslike way. "Are you hurt?"

"If I had my way she'd be hurt, all right," Jim mutters, and pushes Mrs Levinson roughly forward into the room. "Gonna go help Henry keep a lookout, Mick. I don't wanna be anywhere near her."

"That's fine," says Mickey, who has come in after Mrs Levinson, holding Henry's gun. It's pointed at the floor, but from the easy way he handles it, Phyllis suspects he knows how to use it more effectively than Henry does.

"Shut the door," he says to Jess, trailing behind him, and Jess obeys, then leans against the closed door with a scowl that makes her resemblance to Ruthie more pronounced than ever.

"What is this all about?" Cora demands. "Surely you've got what you came for. Why won't you all just leave?"

"They want me to open your brother's safe." Mrs Levinson says. She crosses her arms in a jangle of silver bracelets. "I've told them only Harold knows the combination and he won't be here until tomorrow lunchtime at the soonest, but they don't seem to believe me."

"No, I fucking don't," Mickey says. "Your butler said he saw money in there—paper money and gold—and you'd know how to get it open."

"Did he?" Mrs Levinson says blandly. "And what did you offer Giles in exchange for telling you when we'd be coming back and leaving the house unprotected?"

"None of your business," Mickey says. He repositions the gun so it's pointing directly at Mrs Levinson's head, but the older woman doesn't even flinch.

"Oh, I think it's absolutely my business," she says. "And what about Mrs Fletcher? Was she in on it too? I need to know who to fire when all this is over, you see."

Phyllis, still on her knees at Calvin's side, finds she has a wild urge to laugh at this. The situation isn't funny at all, but something about the way Mrs Levinson is speaking to Mickey and Jess, as if they're all posh guests at the same party, discussing their problems with staff, is amusing in a dark and terrible way. She chokes it back and concentrates on Calvin instead. His breathing seems to have evened out a bit, which she hopes is a positive sign.

"Mama, please," Cora says, pained.

"Don't 'Mama' me, Cora. If I'm going to be an unwilling participant in some sort of criminal enterprise, I'm at least owed the courtesy of an explanation. And since I can't open the safe, we're going to be here for a good long while, so we may as well pass the time somehow." Mrs Levinson gives Mickey a significant look, but it's Jess who speaks up behind him.

"Mrs Fletcher, she's the housekeeper, right? She gave the keys to the butler. Don't know if she knew why he wanted 'em."

"Shut up, Jess," Mickey says. The gun continues to point, unwavering, at Mrs Levinson.

"Don't you fuckin' tell me to shut up," Jess flares. "I'm the one found out about this place to begin with and got the guy at the Plaza to give me the address. You think I liked doing what I had to do to get it?"

"Ruthie told us you dressed up and talked to him." Cora takes a step toward them, but falls back when Mickey jerks the muzzle of the gun in her direction. "It doesn't sound like much of a hardship to me."

Jess snorts. "Ruthie's eleven. I don't tell her everything I do. Mind you, she knows a lot more than she ought to at her age thanks to Mickey here—"

"Shut _up_ ," Mickey says again. "We ain't here to tell our life story. Get that safe open and we'll be outta here." This last is addressed to Mrs Levinson, who shakes her head.

"It doesn't matter how many times you tell me to open the safe. I can't, and that's all there is to it."

"Oh yeah? What if I shoot you?"

"Then I'll be dead and the safe still won't be open." Mrs Levinson says tartly.

"We talked about this," Jess says to Mickey. She pushes herself away from the door and crosses the room to him with long angry strides. "I don't want to really kill no one. You get the electric chair for that. I seen it at the pictures."

"You only get the chair if they catch you," Mickey says. "If we get the money outta that safe we can go anywhere we want, can't we? The cops ain't gonna find us in San Francisco or Florida. Hell, we could go to Canada or Mexico, even."

"Yeah, but—"

"Jessie, I am telling you for the last time to shut your goddamn mouth." There's a cold, hard edge to Mickey's voice, and Jess falls silent, apparently cowed.

Calvin stirs against the sofa cushions, letting out a tiny thread of a moan. Phyllis bends over him, terrified that even this faint noise will attract violence, but Mickey's attention is elsewhere.

"Okay, so you don't care if I shoot you. How about if I shoot Her Ladyness here instead? You want me to do that?"

"Of course I don't," Mrs Levinson says. The words are matter-of-fact, but there's a quiver in them that wasn't there at the prospect of her own death; the two women may not get on, but Cora's mother is still her mother. "But even if you do, it won't make me magically know the combination."

"Ssshhh," Phyllis breathes to Calvin, who is twitching restlessly again. "Be still, Calvin, please be still."

She turns away from him for a moment to refold Cora's handkerchief, hoping to find a spot that isn't already soaked through with sweat, and from the corner of her eye she catches a movement that makes her freeze. The door is inching open.


	13. Chapter 13

From her position beside the sofa, Phyllis can see the widening gap between door and frame, and through it a slice of the softly lamp-lit foyer, but she can't see who or what is pushing the door open. For a moment she thinks of ghosts, and then she catches a glimpse of a dirty bare leg with a fluttering hem of blue dress above it, and she knows exactly who it is. One side of Ruthie's face comes into view—a bruised cheek, a tousle of dark hair, a single hazel eye—and she holds Phyllis's gaze and puts a finger to her lips. _Sshhh._

Phyllis's hands are used to working even when her mind is elsewhere, and so she's able to finish refolding the handkerchief and lay it on Calvin's forehead without taking her eyes off Ruthie, who is now edging round the corner of the door and into the room. She has no idea at all what Ruthie means to do—the idea of a child who probably weighs four stone on a good day taking on a grown man Mickey's size is ludicrous—and she can't see any sign of a weapon in Ruthie's hands. She closes one of her own hands over one of Calvin's, which is cold and damp, and waits to see what will happen next.

"So what's it gonna be?" Mickey says to Mrs Levinson. "Are you gonna open the safe now, or am I gonna shoot people one by one until you open it? Your choice."

Mrs Levinson is pale under her powder and rouge, but she isn't bested yet. "Even if I could open it, which I can't, you might not find as much money as you think. My son doesn't keep the family fortune at home, you know. Whatever's in there varies from day to day depending on his business. If I were you, I'd take what you've already got and go. My jewellery alone is worth more than enough for you to do whatever you want to do."

Behind Jess and Mickey's turned backs, Phyllis sees Ruthie slide completely into the office and ease the door nearly shut, then drop to her hands and knees, any sound she might have made muffled by the thick carpet, and creep along the wall until she's out of Phyllis's view. As she vanishes behind Mr Levinson's great mahogany desk, Cora's gaze flickers in her direction, perhaps attracted by the motion, and her eyes widen; she's seen Ruthie as well. Phyllis is briefly frightened that she may make some sound or movement that will alert their captors, but her Ladyship has had decades to practise keeping a bland, pleasant expression in difficult situations, and the only outward sign is the clench of a muscle in her jaw as she refocuses on Mickey and her mother.

"Lady, the more you try to turn me away from that safe, the more you're makin' me sure there's something worth having in it," Mickey is saying. "I ain't gonna tell you again. Open it up or I shoot someone. Maybe I'll start with your maid, save the important people for later."

Part of Phyllis's brain registers these words and is horrified by them, but she can't give them her full attention, because Ruthie has suddenly stood up behind the desk. In one hand, she's holding a bunched-up electrical wire that she seems to have unplugged from the wall, and in her other hand is the heavy glass-shaded lamp to which that wire is connected. Phyllis expects her to call Mickey's name, but Ruthie just cocks back her arm and hurls the lamp with all her strength, so it goes crashing to the bare floor directly in front of the desk.

The lampshade smashes on impact, sending green and red and blue glass shards everywhere; Mickey shouts and jerks the gun around, away from Cora and Mrs Levinson, and in that instant, Jess leaps at him, battering coiled fists against his chest. He drops the gun and grabs her by the throat, and she makes a single choking noise and then falls silent, all her air cut off, unable to do anything but claw at his thick, calloused fingers as her face goes dark and congested with trapped blood. Mickey's knuckles are white with the effort, and Phyllis opens her mouth to say _stop it, stop, you're killing her_ , but someone else speaks up first.

"You let her go."

In the chaos, Ruthie has crawled out from under the desk and is standing beside it, heedless of the broken glass under her feet. Her skinny arms are outstretched, and at the end of them is the gun clasped in both her hands, so dark and heavy in contrast to her small fingers that it looks as if it can't be real. Mickey lets go of Jess—whether in acquiescence to Ruthie's command or simply out of surprise, Phyllis doesn't know—and Jess stumbles away from him and slides down the nearest wall to sit on the floor, taking in the tiny gasps of breath that are all her crushed windpipe will allow.

"I'll shoot you," Ruthie says. "I ain't chicken like Auntie Jess, and they won't give me the electric chair. They'll probably give me the key to the fuckin' city for getting rid of you after all the bad stuff you done."

"Nuh-uh, kid." Mickey's tone is mocking, but Phyllis can see real fear on his face. "You'll go to prison. Locked up for the rest of your life. No more running around the streets for you."

"Shut up." Ruthie's voice is shaking, but her feet are planted firm, and the gun doesn't even twitch as she points it at Mickey. A long, bright ribbon of blood trickles down her right shin from a chunk of glass embedded in her knee. "I got the gun and you don't, so you just _shut up_."

"Ruthie," Phyllis says softly.

"You too, Miss Baxter," Ruthie says without looking in her direction. "You're my friend and I'll never hurt you, but you got to be quiet."

"And that ain't all," Mickey says. He leans toward Ruthie a little, as if confiding a secret. "What's gonna happen to those brothers of yours when you're not around? Jess ain't gonna feed 'em. They'll be in an orphanage this time next month, I bet, stuck in a room with some kid who's got the galloping consumption. Poor little Pat and Frankie, all on their own 'cause their big sister shot a guy, and there you'll be in a cell."

"Maybe I will," Ruthie says, almost thoughtfully. "But you know what? I won't mind so much if I know you're dead." And she pulls the trigger.

"Ruthie, no!"

Phyllis doesn't know who shouted the words, only that it wasn't her. She's instinctively thrown herself over Calvin, the most vulnerable person in the room, and her ears are ringing with the sound of the shot in such close quarters. There's an acrid stink of gunpowder in her nose and the taste of it at the back of her throat, and when she dares to look up, there's a fine haze of smoke hanging in the air, stinging her eyes. Through it, she can see Jess slumped against the wall, her eyes huge and dark with horror; Mrs Levinson with her arms round Lady Grantham, and Ruthie still standing defiant. The gun is on the floor—either because Ruthie dropped it or because the recoil knocked it out of her grip—and next to it is Mickey, with the upper right quadrant of his skull blown to bone fragments and pulp. A wet stain is spreading on the front of his trousers and his eyes are open and sightless, but one foot is still jittering slightly, as if it doesn't know yet that the rest of the body it's attached to is dead.

Everything after that seems to happen both very fast and in a strange sort of slow motion, as if they're all underwater. The door bursts the rest of the way open and the office is full of a vast, roaring confusion of people and noise, someone half-carrying Jess out of the room, someone else grabbing Ruthie round the middle and lifting her up and away as she kicks and struggles. Hands reach for Calvin too, and Phyllis holds her own hands up as a shield. "He's hurt—his head—you have to be careful."

"Move aside, ma'am."

"But he's hurt, listen to me, where's Lady Grantham, she'll tell you..."

"Ma'am, I need you to move. Joe, can you look her over? Good man."

A man in a blue uniform takes Phyllis out into the foyer, makes her sit on a chair, shines a pocket torch in one eye and then the other. "You hurt anywhere, ma'am? Any pain in your chest? Feel faint at all?"

"My ears are ringing," Phyllis says. She can barely hear her own voice through the high-pitched whine that seems to be coming from inside her head. Her stomach feels queasy, as if she's back on board the ship that brought them here, but she thinks this is probably from the sight of Mickey's ruined head. She's seen her share of dead bodies, some of them in poor condition, but never anything quite like that.

"That'll go away." The torch clicks off and she blinks, trying to clear away the bright afterimages floating in front of her. "You're all right. Just sit here and try to relax, okay? One of the officers will come and talk to you." He straightens up, starts to leave her, and she clutches at his sleeve.

"Wait—Calvin—what about Calvin?"

"The head injury? They're calling Harlem Hospital to send an ambulance for him. He'll go up there and have surgery, most likely."

"Will he be all right?"

"Don't know yet. You can check at the hospital in the morning."

"And Ruthie? The little girl?"

"She'll be at the station."

 _Oh God, poor Ruthie._ Phyllis lets her head fall back against the high support of the chair. The commotion of police and medics is only a dull roar out here, and above it she can hear the sonorous chime of the Levinsons' antique grandfather clock striking midnight. Somehow, despite everything, the sound makes her sleepy. Perhaps it's shock, she thinks as her eyes drift closed. Perhaps—

"Baxter?"

The legs of another chair scrape across the parquet floor, and when she forces her eyes open again, Lady Grantham is sitting face to face with her, leaning in close with her hands clasped in her lap. Cora's lacy gloves are smudged with blood that is drying from deep red to rusty brown, and Phyllis thinks, as if in a dream, that she needs to soak them in cold saltwater before they're spoilt for good.

"Baxter," Cora says again, and even through the insistent ringing in Phyllis's ears, the low urgency of her voice is clear. " _Baxter_. Can you hear me?"

"Yes, milady."

"The police want to question you. They think—" Cora pauses. "They think that as you're one of the servants, and you knew Ruthie first, you may have been involved in the robbery plan. I don't think you were, and I'll defend you to my last breath, but first I want you to look at me, Baxter, look into my eyes and tell me that you didn't know anything about it."

This is what Phyllis has been frightened of all along, but now that it's actually happening, she's too numb to feel much of anything. She looks into Cora's blue eyes—even brighter than usual with a shimmering film of tears—and says, simply, "I didn't know, milady."

"All right." Cora pats her knee with a hand in a bloodied glove, and Phyllis wonders vaguely whose blood it is and whether her Ladyship has realised it's there. She watches Cora walk away toward a policeman who is talking to an angrily gesturing Mrs Levinson, and who looks relieved that someone else is arriving to help him deal with his difficult witness. Through the open door to Mr Levinson's office, she can see the rapid-fire flicker of flashbulbs popping as someone from the police takes photographs, probably of the body. Is anyone tending to Calvin in there, she wonders, and then gets her answer as two brown-skinned men in white medical-looking uniforms emerge from the office with Calvin on a stretcher carried between them. He's tucked under a grey woollen blanket with canvas straps cinched round him for safety, and she notes with relief that his face is uncovered; he's still alive.

The men nod to her as they pass, and she sits back in the chair and hopes Ruthie is being treated as carefully. In a way she wishes she could be taken to the police station, where she might at least get a glimpse of Ruthie and know the child is all right, but she knows being put into the cells even for an hour would drive her mad. If only Mr Molesley were here, she thinks, he would understand. Molesley would be right by her side, worried for her welfare above all else. Without him she feels alone and adrift in the shuffle, but there is nothing for her to do but sit and wait.

"Miss Baxter, we're ready for you."

It's a policeman in a blue tunic—a very young one, with a gangly, half-grown look and a few spots still on his chin—and Phyllis stands up, obedient even in the depths of her shock, and follows him to the cold formal dining room, where another pair of policemen are waiting at the long, polished, empty table along with Lady Grantham and Mrs Levinson. She's glad to see the latter two, and it's good that they're there, because even with their intervention, she barely escapes being taken in for more intense questioning after she's told her story and signed a written statement. Only when Cora threatens to contact the British Consulate General and complain on her behalf do the police finally agree to let her alone, and she's allowed to return to her chair in the foyer, where she watches as Mickey is removed with a great deal less gentleness than Calvin was.

It could be worse, she thinks. That could be Lady Grantham under the bloody sheet, or Mrs Levinson, or her. It could even be Jess, whom she rather hopes is all right; whether she wants to or not, she feels a certain kinship with Jess, who has also committed crimes at a man's instigation, and who did, after all, draw the line at killing anyone. She wonders what's happened to Henry and Jim, and decides she doesn't care. Ruthie and Calvin are her only concerns; Ruthie alone at some distant police station, Calvin unconscious under a surgeon's knife. Although she was brought up to be a churchgoer and still attends dutifully whenever she can, Phyllis is not much given to prayer, but now she closes her eyes again and sends out a small, silent plea for both of them. It's all she can do.


	14. Chapter 14

The police refuse to let them spend the night in the house, which is considered a crime scene, but when all is said and done, the night is nearly over anyway by the time everyone's statement has been taken and they're released. Even an hour before sunrise, there's traffic on Fifth Avenue: delivery vans bearing bread and milk for the big houses, heavier vehicles carrying commercial loads, and buses and cabs transporting people to work. It's thanks to the latter that Phyllis and Cora, standing side by side on the front steps, are there to witness the Levinsons' live-out staff arriving one by one and being whisked off for questioning. Mr Giles, the butler, and Mrs Fletcher, the housekeeper, are still nowhere to be found, and Cora says that their rooms in the house have been searched and are empty. Whatever Mickey and Jess promised them in exchange for their help, they will wait for it in vain.

Phyllis watches the last of the maids being escorted round the back and shivers: her light camel-coloured coat, which was more than enough for late summer in Newport, isn't equal to the chill, and her warmer one is still packed in the trunks they haven't been allowed to access. Mrs Levinson had been especially incensed about that, insisting that their clothes weren't evidence ( _I don't know what you're expecting to find in my bloomers, young man_ , had been her actual words, making several of the police officers on the scene turn away to stifle laughter), until Cora had stepped in and said they would simply have to phone Bergdorf Goodman when it opened and have a few things sent around; after nearly being shot, having to wear _prêt-a-porter_ for a day or two would hardly kill them. Phyllis knows she should be more concerned about Cora's appearance, which is a direct reflection on her own work, but it isn't terribly high on her list of priorities at the moment.

"Milady," she says. "Has anyone told Calvin's family what's happened?"

"I'm sure the police will notify them," Cora says vaguely, still looking out at the street. "Do you know, the girls used to play on these steps when they visited as children? They'd bring their dolls out and have tea parties. Mostly Lady Edith and Lady Sybil; Mary never cared much for that sort of thing."

Her mind is clearly miles away, but Phyllis presses on, determined. "Only Calvin helps to look after his sister and her daughter, and they'll have been expecting him. He'd written them to say he'd be coming back from Newport yesterday. I don't think they have a telephone, but if someone could go round there-"

"Baxter, I know you're concerned. I am too, but we'll just have to trust that the police are handling it." Cora glances over, and her expression softens visibly when she sees the tears in Phyllis's eyes. "Perhaps when we get to our hotel, you can telephone the hospital to check that they know."

"Are we going back to the Plaza?"

"Certainly not," Cora says. "It's their concierge's fault that Jess was able to get our address. They'll be lucky if my brother doesn't take them to court over it. No, we'll stay at the Waldorf Astoria for as long as we're here, which may not be long, because I'm looking into having our steamer tickets changed to the next sailing if at all possible. If the police need anything else from us, they can send a cable. I'd already had enough of this trip, but this is really beyond the final straw."

"Yes, of course, milady." Phyllis is afraid to ask the next question, but nerves herself up and does it anyway. "And Ruthie? What will happen to her?"

The light is greying rapidly now, and it makes Cora's face, normally youthful for her age, look like a haggard old woman's as she shakes her head. "I wish I knew. I would think they'd count what she did to Mickey as self-defence, but you and I both know that these things can go in unexpected ways. She was involved in the robbery plan-"

"She's only a little girl," Phyllis says desperately. "Think of your daughters, milady. Ruthie should be playing with dolls as well. It's not her fault she's had a different sort of life."

"Of course it isn't, and I don't think she ought to be held responsible for her involvement, but I don't make the laws." She holds up a hand to stop any further argument Phyllis may be planning to make. "I promise you this, Baxter, Ruthie will have whatever support the Levinson family can give her. I'll speak to my brother as soon as he arrives about retaining someone to represent her. Heaven knows he can afford it, and he ought to be grateful to Ruthie for stopping the robbery before they were able to get away with anything."

"Thank you, milady." This reminds Phyllis of something else that has been on her mind, and she decides as long as she's asking impertinent questions, she may as well go ahead and ask this one as well. "Mrs Levinson didn't really know the combination to the safe, did she? It didn't seem as if she did, but..."

The corner of Cora's mouth lifts in a wry smile. "I actually don't know, Baxter. I don't think so, but I wouldn't put it past my mother to believe she could outbluff people like Mickey and Jess. You should see her play bridge."

"Oh," Phyllis says, shocked, and Cora laughs a little.

"Don't think about it, Baxter. For my own sanity, I don't intend to." She lifts a pale wrist, looks at the delicate gold watch clasped round it. "Let's go and see what's keeping Mama. I'm exhausted and you must be too; if we can only get to the hotel, we can rest for a few hours before Mr Levinson comes."

"Yes, milady."

It's full daylight by the time they finally reach the Waldorf Astoria, which is stuffier than the Plaza, and dripping with the velvet hangings and tassels and heavy carved furniture that were fashionable thirty years ago. Phyllis worries that she may fall asleep on her feet as they wait in the thickly carpeted lobby with its jungle of potted palms, but once she's undressed Cora and Mrs Levinson and settled them in bed, she finds her internal clock has reset itself and she's awake again. With this second wind, she uses the telephone in her room to place a call to Harlem Hospital, where she speaks to a tired but kind-sounding nurse who confirms that Calvin has had his operation and his sister is there with him, and then she takes out pen and paper and tries to write a letter to Mr Molesley. There seems to be no way to explain it all in a way that won't horrify him, so at last she gives up and goes to stand at the window instead, watching the cars flow past on Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Third Street below.

 _Thirty-Third and Fifth_ , she thinks, remembering Calvin explaining the street system to her on her first day here. The cars are so far below they look like children's toys, which makes her think of Ruthie's brothers, and of Mickey's taunts about their inevitable incarceration in an orphanage. Do they know yet that Mickey is dead, or that their aunt and sister have been arrested? As wary of the police as Ruthie is, she doubts the child would send them to collect the boys, and Jess may not care enough. If only Phyllis knew where they lived, she could find them and tell them herself. Thomas would want her to do that. Thomas is good with little ones and would know what to say, how to make them smile and feel safe in spite of everything. Surely they deserve that much, considering what their future most likely holds.

Phyllis looks at the clock and sees it's just past nine in the morning; Mr Levinson isn't expected until midafternoon at the soonest, and the two ladies will likely be asleep until lunchtime or later. She doesn't know where to find Ruthie's brothers, but Ruthie does, and she may be the only person the girl trusts enough to tell. She will go to the police station and ask to see Ruthie; she's out of suspicion herself, thanks to Lady Grantham and Mrs Levinson's intervention, and they won't try to detain her there. If she can give Ruthie some comfort and ensure her brothers are taken care of, perhaps then she can finally sleep.

Her mind made up, she writes a hasty note in case Cora should awaken while she's away, and then reaches for the telephone again to order a cab.


	15. Chapter 15

From overheard talk at the Levinsons' house, Phyllis knows that both Ruthie and Jess were taken to the New York City police department's headquarters, and thanks to Calvin and his map, she understands what the cab driver means when he says the building is downtown, in Little Italy.

"You sure you want to go down there, lady?" he asks, and Phyllis says yes, leaning far forward to make certain he can hear her. One of the things she has learnt about America is that "speaking up" is expected, but after years of training in being quiet and unobtrusive, it's nearly impossible for her to raise her voice to the required volume. She's uncomfortable about sitting in the back seat of a car as well, but the hotel's doorman had opened the rear door for her, and the cabbie seems to take it for granted that she should be there, so she endures the discomfort and tries to pretend she's the Countess of Grantham instead of ordinary Phyllis Baxter as the cab pulls away from the Waldorf Astoria's grand entrance.

The streets get grimier and more crowded as they go, and through the cab's window she can see people selling fruit and vegetables and ices from carts; black-clad women with shopping baskets picking over the wares; and hordes of dirty, barefoot children who remind her of Ruthie. They're running and laughing and fighting, playing with hoops and tops and marbles, and darting in and out between the mixed traffic of autos and horse-drawn carts, narrowly avoiding being crushed under the wheels. Along an alleyway hung with long ropes from which people's washing flutters like flags, she can see a group of boys and girls swinging on the bottom rung of a fire escape, and remembers Ruthie talking about doing that exact thing with her brothers. This is Ruthie's world, Ruthie's life laid out before her eyes, and while she knows better than to romanticise poverty, she would still rather see the child returned here than sent to prison.

 _There must be a way_ , she thinks, watching as the tenement buildings give way to taller ones again and the cabbie points ahead. "There it is, lady. See that shiny copper thing up on top and the round part sticking up over the clock?"

"The cupola," says Phyllis, who has toured enough cathedrals in her time to know at least this much about architecture.

"That what it's called? Anyway, that's where you're going. I gotta let you out at the corner cause of all the cop cars at the front. Don't go wandering around too far from the building, now. You'd think this'd be the safest street in the city, but it ain't, not by a mile."

"Thank you," Phyllis says faintly. The fare is eighty cents; she hands over a crisp one-dollar note and tells the cabbie to keep the rest, and then she's out of the cab and on the pavement, walking fast with her handbag held close to her body in deference to his warning.

No thanks to Peter Coyle, she's had some contact with the legal system since her release from prison, but she hasn't been into an actual police station since the afternoon she was taken up. This one is a smaller building than some in New York, but it's more than imposing enough, long and narrow and many-windowed, with slender, fluted columns round the entrance and stone carvings above the door, and she has to stop outside and breathe deeply before she can climb the steps. Pushing through the double doors at the top, she finds a dizzying whirlwind of activity, with telephones ringing and typewriters clacking and men everywhere, men in three-piece suits and police uniforms and janitors' smocks, all of them looking busy and unwelcoming.

She glances around, feeling a little desperate, and spots a semicircular desk with a solitary older policeman sitting behind it. His face is stern and weathered, as if carved from a block of stone or the trunk of a knotty pine, but he reminds her a little of Mr Carson at home, and that familiarity gives her the courage to approach.

"I'm so sorry to trouble you, but if I might ask a question?"

The man leans forward in his chair with a creak of springs, folding his arms on the surface of the desk. "Ask away, miss."

It takes a bit of explaining, but in the end she's able to make him understand who she is and what she wants, and after picking up the shiny black telephone on his desk and speaking to an unseen person somewhere in the bowels of the building, he tells her that she can see Ruthie, but only for ten minutes. Someone will come up to escort her there, if she'd care to take a seat and wait?

"And don't look so scared, darlin', we don't put nice ladies like you in the cells," he adds, with an unexpected grin that splits his craggy visage in two, and Phyllis swallows hard and thanks him for his help.

It's a female matron who arrives to take her to the visiting room, a tall, sturdy woman in a white blouse and navy skirt with brass buttons, which echoes the male police officers' uniforms without replicating them. Unlike the desk sergeant, she seems to have no interest in making conversation, which suits Phyllis just fine; it's all she can do to stay composed and keep putting one foot in front of the other as they go down two flights of stairs and then along a dimly lit corridor where the glass panels in the doors are reinforced with crisscrossing silver strands of wire. There are no actual cells or bars in sight, but she can sense them somewhere in the building, like a heavy weight that presses on her chest and makes it hard to get enough air. The matron shows her into a room that is set up almost identically to the one she remembers from her own time in prison: grey-painted walls, a bare wooden table with a chair on either side, and a single window, too small and too high on the wall for anyone to climb through.

"Have a seat," the matron says, and Phyllis perches on the edge of one of the chairs and waits as the woman disappears, closing the door behind her with a small, clear click that sounds like the snap of a padlock.

 _Deep breaths,_ she reminds herself, and folds her gloved hands on the table in front of her until the door opens again.

"Miss Baxter!"

Ruthie's face is still bruised and scratched, but it's clean for the first time since Phyllis met her, and someone has washed her hair as well, though it's as ragged and wild as ever. The omnipresent blue dress is gone as well, replaced with a rough brown prison smock that is probably the smallest adult size, but still large enough to nearly swallow Ruthie's birdlike body whole. She tries to rush toward Phyllis, but the matron steps forward and Phyllis puts out a warning hand.

"We can't touch, Ruthie."

A dark cloud passes across Ruthie's brow. "Why not?"

"Because it's against the rules. They want to be sure I'm not passing you something that you could use to hurt yourself, or someone else."

"I'm not gonna hurt no one else," Ruthie says. "You know I wouldn't do that, Miss Baxter. Oh my God, I been missing you so much. There's no one here I know except Auntie Jess, and I ain't seen her. Not like I want to." She pauses. "Did I kill Mickey? Nobody'll say."

Phyllis looks at the matron, who shrugs as if to say _Tell her if you like._

"Yes," she says. "He's dead. You killed him."

"Good," Ruthie says defiantly. "It serves him right. Not just for robbing that big house and saying he'd shoot you and her Ladyship, for all the other stuff he done. You don't know the half of it, Miss Baxter. You're such a nice person, I bet you don't know about that kinda stuff at all."

"You might be surprised," Phyllis says. In fact, she already has an idea of what Ruthie may mean, based on something Jess said in passing, and she makes her voice carefully neutral with a tinge of gentleness. "Would you like to tell me about it?"

"Not in front of her." Ruthie shoots a baleful glare at the matron. "It ain't the sort of thing you talk about in a crowd."

"That's all right," Phyllis says. "It's your story to tell. It doesn't belong to me or anyone else. Only when the time comes, Ruthie—when you get your chance to tell—you've got to say all there is to say."

"It's hard," Ruthie says, and her voice is smaller and softer than usual.

"I know. It's the hardest thing in the world to talk about what you'd rather forget. But if you don't, and they keep you here because they don't know all the truth about Mickey, then he'll win, even though he's dead. You don't want that, do you?"

"Course I don't." Ruthie sits back in her chair and plucks restlessly at the bunched-up extra fabric of her smock. "Did you ever have to talk about things you didn't want to talk about? Things that were bad?"

Phyllis nods. "I hated doing it, but I had a friend who helped me see why I had to. I'd like to help you the same way, if you'll let me."

"You shouldn't help me," Ruthie says. "I got you in trouble with your boss. I showed Mickey and Jess where the house was. I tricked you into opening the door. I tried to make you leave that guy Calvin when he was hurt." She bites her lip. "Did he die too?"

"No, lovey, he didn't. He's in hospital, but he's alive." Phyllis longs to take the child in her arms, but sees the matron's warning face from the corner of her eye and refrains. "None of those things were your fault, Ruthie. You were frightened and just trying to survive. And maybe you can't change any of the choices you've already made, but you can make the right ones going forward. That's something else my friend showed me."

"Maybe," Ruthie says.

"Not maybe. Really," Phyllis says firmly. "You've already begun by fetching the police to help us, even though you were afraid to. You're going to tell them all about Mickey." She can feel her allotted time for this visit ticking away and tries to go faster. "And there's one other thing you can do."

"What's that?"

"Tell me where to find your brothers."

"No!" Ruthie jerks in her seat and shakes her head frantically. "I don't want them to go to an orphanage. Not really. Mickey was right, you get sick and die in those fuckin' places."

"You have to, though. They're only little. They need someone to look after them."

"Frankie can do it," Ruthie says stubbornly. "He's eight. I was already lookin' after all three of us when I was his age, and Pat was only a baby then."

"But you had your aunt. I know," Phyllis says, seeing the objection forming on Ruthie's cut and swollen lips. "I know she wasn't much use, but she did keep a roof over your heads, Ruthie, and she won't be there to do that anymore. You may not go to prison in the end, but she will, for a long time, and what will happen then? Winter is only a few months away, and I'm told it gets very cold here. The boys can't sleep rough in that, and neither can you."

"Other kids in the city do."

"I'm sure," Phyllis says. "But not all of them survive it, do they? Especially the little ones." At the door, the matron catches Phyllis's eye and taps the face of her wristwatch, and Phyllis makes one last effort. "Everything you've done so far has been to protect your brothers. Don't stop now, Ruthie. Tell me where to find them. Or tell the police if you don't want to tell me. Is Jess going to do it?"

"No," Ruthie whispers. "Jess won't think to. She don't think about any of us unless she has to. And the cops...the cops don't know to look for 'em at all."

"They might think you've run away and left them," Phyllis suggests.

"They'd never," Ruthie says. Her hands clench into fists, white-knuckled. "They know me better. But they'll think something's happened to me. Frankie knows Mickey's got a gun. He'll think Mickey killed me and threw my body in the river. He used to say he was going to do it to scare the boys, when one of us made him mad."

"Time's up," the matron says from the doorway. "Back to your holding room, little miss. You'll be going up to see the judge in a few hours, as soon as your lawyer gets here. I heard the family whose house you tried to rob are hiring someone to represent you, goodness knows why."

"She didn't try to rob them," Phyllis says. Her own voice surprises her with its strength and volume; it seems she's suddenly learnt the fine art of speaking up. "And she has some important information, so please will you call someone in to take it down?"

"I don't take orders from you, lady. Write it down yourself if it's so important, and leave it with the desk sergeant on your way out."

"It's okay, Miss Baxter." Ruthie leans across the table and puts a thin hand on Phyllis's arm, in defiance of the rules. "It's Ludlow Street. Number eleven, third floor. Only you can't send cops 'cause the boys'll run and hide if they see uniforms. Jess taught us all to, ever since we were tiny."

"Number eleven, Ludlow Street," Phyllis repeats. "Thank you, Ruthie. You were right to tell me."

"I hope so," Ruthie says darkly, and stands up to be led away by the scowling matron.


	16. Chapter 16

On the morning Phyllis was released early from prison, she'd been certain up until the gates closed behind her that it would turn out to be a cruel trick, and she would be dragged back to her cell to serve another two years. She feels the same way now as she follows the matron up the stairs to leave the police station, and by the time she's crossing the noisy open bullpen, there's sweat dampening her forehead and sticking her blouse to her back. She wants to bolt and run the last few steps to the looming double doors, but forces herself to walk slowly, as if she has every right to come and go as she pleases, and then she's outside and free.

The sky has filled with fast-moving clouds, driven by a brisk wind that whips right through her coat, but after the overheated atmosphere indoors, she's too grateful for the fresh air to mind. She draws a deep breath of air so cold it feels like shattered glass in her lungs, and then goes down to the pavement and boldly gets into the back of one of the cabs waiting at the side of the road.

"Where to?" This cabbie is younger than the previous one, with olive skin and curly black hair, and she senses none of the older man's talkative friendliness in him. He's impatient, wanting to get on with it so he can deliver her and pick up another fare, and when she hesitates he says sharply, "I don't got all day, lady. Either tell me where you want to go or get out."

"The Waldorf Astoria Hotel," Phyllis says reluctantly. It isn't Ludlow Street, where she wants to go, but she's already been away longer than she planned, and she has to dress Lady Grantham and Mrs Levinson to meet Mr Levinson when he arrives. As the cab pulls away and merges with the flow of traffic, she thinks of the two little boys on their own, waiting for their sister, and sends a silent message to the universe to look after them until she can come.

When she returns to Cora's suite of rooms, her Ladyship is just beginning to stir awake, and Phyllis picks up the still-unread note she left on the dressing table and tucks it into her pocket before approaching the bed.

"What time is it, Baxter?"

"Past one o'clock in the afternoon, milady."

"It's so dark." Cora's voice is irritable and scratchy with sleep.

"A storm's blown up," Phyllis says, and as if to prove her right, lightning stutters across the sky, followed by a grumble of faraway thunder. "Shall I ring for some tea?"

"Not just now, thank you." Cora pushes her bedcovers away restlessly. "I'll have to dress. My brother must be here already. He and Mama were going to meet with a solicitor about Ruthie."

"They already have." Phyllis plumps the flattened pillows, smooths their fine linen cases and rearranges them against Cora's back as she sits up in bed. Cora's skin is warm and flushed, and she wonders whether her Ladyship might be going down with a fever from the stress of the previous day. "I saw them in the foyer downstairs, just coming in. Miss Snyder dressed Mrs Levinson while I was—while I was away."

"Away?"

Even though she was within her rights to go out briefly, Phyllis isn't eager to explain this part, but there's no way to avoid it, so she draws a breath and plunges in.

"I've been to the police station to see Ruthie."

"The police station!" Cora is fully awake now, alert and aware. "All on your own? And did they let you see her?"

"Yes, milady."

"Oh," Cora says, nonplussed. "Is she well?"

"As well as can be expected." Phyllis fetches her Ladyship's silk dressing gown and brings it to the bedside, draped properly over one arm. "She's scheduled to go before the judge later today, once the solicitor arrives to speak for her. But there's something else, milady."

"What is it?"

"It's her little brothers," Phyllis says. "She mentioned them last night, when we were locked in the storeroom."

Cora nods. "I remember. Frankie and..."

"Pat, milady. They're quite young, eight and four, and they've been left on their own now that Ruthie and Jess have been taken up."

"How awful," Cora says. "We'll have to make certain that the police go and collect them. I suppose they haven't any other family, have they?"

"No," Phyllis says, "and about the police...Ruthie says that Jess taught the boys to be frightened of them. She would, you know. Ruthie was quite adamant that the police mustn't be sent after them, and so I told her—I told her—"

"What did you tell her, Baxter?" Cora looks as if she thinks she already knows the answer, but she waits for Phyllis to say it anyway.

"I told her I would go and fetch them myself, milady. They won't be as frightened of me. Ruthie told them about me, before. Oh, please—" Cora is already shaking her head, and Phyllis feels her heart sink like a stone.

"I can't allow it, Baxter. I admire your dedication to helping Ruthie, but you can't go into a tenement slum full of criminals and disease. It isn't proper. I know Ruthie doesn't want the police involved, but she's a child and she isn't entitled to make all the decisions in this situation. You'll simply have to let them handle it."

"I would, milady, I truly would, but Ruthie said the boys will only run away and hide if they see uniforms, and who knows where they might go or what might happen to them? They're only small." Phyllis would never dare touch her Ladyship without being invited, but she extends her hands toward the other woman, palms upward, beseeching. "I'd take one of the men with me, but Calvin is ill and Mrs Levinson's butler is—well—"

"All the more reason for you not to go," Cora says, in a tone that indicates the discussion is over. "Put it out of your mind, Baxter. Focus on your own work and let the police do theirs."

"You may as well let her go, Cora."

They both look up, startled, to find Mrs Levinson at the open door that leads to the suite's sitting room, still in her bright scarlet coat and hat from her trip to the solicitor's office.

"Don't talk nonsense, Mama," her Ladyship snaps back. "Of course she can't go."

"We haven't got indentured servitude in this country anymore," Mrs Levinson says dryly, pulling off her gloves and tucking them into her handbag. "She's a free woman and can go where she likes. She might have gone to find these two boys without asking your permission first, but she didn't. You've got to give her credit there."

"It isn't that," Cora says.

"What is it then?"

Instead of answering her mother, her Ladyship turns to Phyllis, and for the second time that day, Phyllis sees tears in her eyes.

"I don't want any harm to come to you, Baxter. We've been so lucky to escape without being seriously hurt. I can't bear it if something happens to you now, when we're so close to going home, and in a place like that..."

"Your brother's hired a guard to watch over the house for a few days, just in case," Mrs Levinson says. "He can go along with her. He's a big man and he carries a gun; she won't be in any danger with him around, or not very much anyway."

"You're not helping, Mama." Cora's voice is weary, and Phyllis can sense her resolve beginning to waver. "Are you absolutely certain you want to do this, Baxter? It won't be pleasant for you."

"Yes, milady," Phyllis says. She hates reminding Cora about her past and never does so if she can help it, but now she adds, thinking it may bolster her case, "I'm very grateful for your concern, but I've seen a few unsavoury places in my life. I won't be shocked the way some women might be."

"I still don't like it," Cora says. "But go if you must. Only be careful, and I expect you back within two hours, no matter what happens. If you can't find the boys in that amount of time, we'll send the police instead, and I won't hear another word about it."

"Thank you, milady." Phyllis turns to Mrs Levinson. "Thank you, ma'am."

Having done her part by convincing Cora to let Phyllis go, Mrs Levinson draws a line at letting either of her cars be taken to Ludlow Street, especially without Calvin to drive them. This leaves Phyllis to resort to another hired cab, whose driver refuses at first when he hears where she wants to go, then argues until she pays him an extra five dollars to go there and another five to wait while she goes in. She sits in the back seat, and Mr Levinson's hired guard squashes into the front next to the driver, where he takes up far more than his share of space. He's a mountain of muscle, twice the size even of Mickey's man Jim, and under other circumstances Phyllis would have been terrified of him, but at the moment she's grateful for his presence. If even the cabbie doesn't want to go to Ludlow Street, she dreads to think what must be waiting for her there.

The rain has picked up from a drizzle to a deluge, and it pours down the glass in silvery running sheets as they crawl along, with the windows steadily steaming over from their breath and the cabbie swearing intermittently at his inability to see. The two-hour time limit Cora imposed is ticking away, making Phyllis feel sick inside, but she doesn't dare ask the cabbie to go any faster. At last they stop in front of a tall, dark building fronted by cagelike fire escapes, and hemmed in on either side by other buildings just like it. The dripping alleyways between them are heaped with rubbish, and so narrow that Phyllis could stand in the middle and touch the walls on either side, not that she intends to try.

"Don't be too long," the cabbie warns her as she climbs out, carrying her handbag and a paper sack. "Soon as someone looks at me the wrong way, I'm gone, ten dollars or no ten dollars."

Phyllis ignores him, and she and the guard pass through the building's front entrance, which is a gaping black hole with one of its double doors missing and the other one hanging from a single hinge. Inside, the foyer floor is thick with torn and yellowed old newspapers, smashed bits of wood and tile and plaster, the carcasses of long-dead sparrows, and other objects Phyllis can't identify and doesn't want to. A baby's broken pram sits in a corner, slumped over on a bent wheel, with a filthy, one-legged doll dangling carelessly over its edge. The roof is leaking in three different places, soaking the whole mess with rain and releasing a scent of old ponds filled with stagnant water.

"It's upstairs," she says to the guard.

He gestures for her to go ahead of him, and she starts up the narrow, stinking staircase, grateful for his presence looming at her back. At every landing there are people: ragged children, unshaven men who reek of raw spirits, and at least one unconscious woman, propped half-sitting against a wall with her dress hiked up to show a pale, bruised thigh, but not one of them says a word to Phyllis as she steps over broken stair treads and tries to avoid pools of vomit and urine. At the third landing, a skinny cat trots past with a mouse dangling from its mouth, eyes her and then melts away into the shadows.

Shuddering, Phyllis looks at the four doorways she has to choose from and wonders which to try first. She's reluctant to knock in a building where such a sound probably heralds a visit from a debt collector rather than a neighbour, so she bypasses the two nearest her, which are both closed up tight. The open door beyond them reveals a patchwork of pallets packed in cheek by jowl, with a man rolled up in blankets and sleeping on each one; there must be fifteen men in there, she thinks, sharing a room only large enough for three or four to live comfortably.

In the room farthest from the stairs, she finds conditions that are just as run-down, but less cramped, with a sagging double bed pushed into one corner and a mattress and a nest of filthy blankets in another. Water drips from another leak in the ceiling and into a rusty pie tin on the floor, making a metallic _plink_ with each drop. It seems deserted, but as she looks around, her gaze falls on something familiar: a pair of canvas shoes with the toes cut out to make room for feet that have outgrown them, lined up neatly against a wall.

 _Oh, Ruthie_ , she thinks.

"Will you wait here, please?" she asks the guard, who nods assent and takes up a position just outside the door, one hand resting on the weapon in his pocket. As Phyllis steps in, there's a tiny rustle in the corner, and she sees a flicker of movement among the blankets, but tries not to watch too closely for fear of frightening her quarry. She can't tell whether it's one boy or both, but it's definitely _someone_.

"Frankie?" she says softly. "Pat? Are you there?"

She waits for an answer, gets nothing.

"I'm Ruthie's friend, Miss Baxter. I know she's told you about me. She sent me here to see you."

More silence, but if she listens closely, she thinks she can hear a very faint sound of breathing.

Before coming here, she instructed the cabbie to detour to the hot dog stand at Columbus Circle, and now she opens the paper bag in her hand and lets the savoury aroma of warm bread and sausage waft into the room. She suspects that Ruthie has made certain her brothers were able to eat even at her own expense, so they're not as near starvation as Ruthie herself, but after a day and night alone, they're likely to be ravenous all the same.

"I've brought you some food," she says. "I know Ruthie gives you your meals, so as she's not here I thought you might be hungry. I'll put it down just here." She takes a few steps forward to set the open bag on the floor before retreating again. "Ruthie told you that I bought her hot dogs, didn't she? She said they were delicious. I'm sure you'll like them as much as she did."

Before she's quite finished, the blankets stir again, and a tiny dark-haired boy crawls out of their scant protection and stands up. Phyllis hears a hiss of "Pat, _no_!" but Pat's attention is fixed on the paper bag, and in a flash he's across the floor, crouching and tearing into it with one eye on Phyllis. His shirt and short trousers look as if they've been handed down half a dozen times; they're faded and too tight and his bare feet are grimy, but he still looks healthier and better cared for than the children on the staircase, which is no doubt Ruthie's handiwork.

"Come out, Frank. There's hot dogs for you too. One—two—three—four of em."

He plunges his hands into the sack and comes out with a hot dog in each one, his fingers leaving dirty prints on the soft white roll, and tucks in without a pause. Phyllis waits, breath held, and then Frankie emerges as well. He's tall for his age, at least the size of Ruthie even though Ruthie is years older, and instead of being too small, his clothes are too big: long trousers chopped off at the ankles and held up with a length of string through the belt loops, and a man's checked shirt with its sleeves turned up three or four times and its tails hanging nearly to his knees. He sizes Phyllis up briefly, with startlingly blue eyes that remind her of Lady Grantham's, and then dismisses her and kneels beside his brother to get his share of food.

"Auntie Jess'll beat the stuffing out of us if she finds out you was here," Frankie says through a mouth full of hot dog. "We're not sposed to let no one in when she ain't home, which is all the time mostly."

"She's not going to do a thing to you," Phyllis says. "She's gone to prison. Do you know what that means?"

"Means she's locked _up_ ," Pat crows, spraying crumbs. "All locked up and they throwed away the key."

Frankie, older and wiser, looks up at Phyllis with a suspicious face. "How long's she there for? Sometimes they only keep you overnight, specially if it's for being drunk."

"It wasn't for that," Phyllis says. "She'll be there for a very long time, and Mickey—"

At the sound of Mickey's name, both boys rear backward like a pair of spooked horses, and Phyllis hastens to reassure them. "No, no. It's all right. Mickey will never come here again. He's dead."

"Really dead?" Frankie asks. "For sure?"

"Really and truly," Phyllis says. "I saw him."

"I seen a dead guy before," Pat announces. "He fell off a roof. He was all bloody. Was Mickey all bloody?"

Phyllis's mind summons up an involuntary image of Mickey's shattered skull and twitching foot, and she pulls her handkerchief out of her coat pocket and presses it hard to her mouth, afraid she may be sick.

"Yes," she says, when the urge to vomit has passed. "He was, but let's not talk about him. We have other things to think about."

"Like what?" Frankie has finished his second hot dog; he eyes the remaining piece of one clenched in Pat's dirty fist, but restrains himself, and Phyllis thinks again of Ruthie, who will have taught him by example to sacrifice for his little brother.

"Like taking you to a safe place," Phyllis says. "That's what Ruthie sent me to do. She wants you to come with me."

"No." Frankie shakes his head. "We gotta wait here for Ruthie. She said she'd come back soon's she could."

"We can go, Frankie," Pat says, pulling at his brother's arm. "Miss Baxter gave Ruthie the money and the letter. She won't take us noplace bad."

"Ruthie said to wait," Frankie says stubbornly. "She'll be mad if we don't."

Phyllis looks down at his small face, already bearing a touch of that canny, young-old look she has seen on his sister's, and decides she will have to try a different tack to convince him. She's quite certain that the guard outside could pick a boy up under each massive arm like a doll and carry them both to the cab whether they like it or not, but she would rather have them come of their own accord.

"Pat," she says to the little boy, "is there anything special you'd like to take with you when we go? A toy, or something else you wouldn't want to leave behind?"

"My bottle caps," Pat says at once, and scampers over to the mattress, where Phyllis can see twenty or thirty of the metal caps, arranged in neat rows by colour as if for a game of Pat's own invention. As Pat begins picking them up one at a time and stuffing them down into his pockets, Phyllis leans closer to Frankie and speaks softly and quickly, mindful of the limited time she has left to accomplish her mission.

"Listen to me, Frankie. Pat mustn't hear this, but I can tell it to you because you're the eldest now, aren't you? You're in charge when Ruthie isn't here."

"Yeah," Frankie says, warily, but with a touch of pride in his own maturity.

"All right. The truth is that Ruthie is in prison as well. I don't think she'll stay very long—there are people working to help set her free—but for now she's there, and that means you and Pat can't be left here on your own. Without Ruthie, you'll be out on the street in no time, and you're old enough to know what will happen then." Phyllis glances up, sees that Pat is nearly finished gathering his collection, and presses on. "I'll take you to her as soon as I can, but for now, Frankie, for right now I need you to come with me and not to argue. Can you do that?"

Frankie nods, looking white and stunned, and Phyllis smiles at Pat as he returns with his pockets bulging. She doesn't bother to ask if the boys have coats or shoes; these are things that will have to be purchased for them later, out of her fast-dwindling reserves. For the first time, she wishes she had taken Thomas and Mr Molesley up on their offer to send her money.

"Shall we go now?" she asks. "There's a car waiting for us downstairs."

"I never rode in no car," Pat says.

"You did once," Frankie corrects him, coming out of his daze enough to set his little brother straight. "That guy Stoney who lives on Division Street stole a Model T, and everyone got a ride around the block in it."

"Don't remember that," Pat says, and slips his hand trustingly into Phyllis's gloved one. "Did you steal the car downstairs?"

"Not at all," Phyllis assures him. "Come along and I'll show you."


	17. Chapter 17

Several days later, Phyllis finds herself inside yet another large building, but this one, unlike the police station, holds no fear for her. Its long corridors have immaculately waxed floors and fresh white paint, and there's a sharp smell of disinfectant everywhere that almost covers up the pervasive scent of illness underneath. As she passes a long, open ward lined with beds, she glimpses two of the workers who are responsible for all this cleanliness, polishing tall windows with handfuls of newspaper until they sparkle. Morning sunlight streams through the glass, a pale yellow that makes Phyllis think of the iced lemon squash they all drank in Newport, during long, sleepy summer afternoons that already feel like ancient history.

It's the tenth of September, and she and Lady Grantham are departing for home this afternoon on the first ship that was available—not as grand as the one that brought them here, but Cora says she's willing to trade gold leaf and Louis XIV chairs for speed. Before they leave, though, Phyllis has a call to pay here, at the private hospital where the Levinsons have arranged for Calvin to be moved. He has a room to himself, and as she approaches, she sees a tall, graceful woman and a young girl—Calvin's sister and his niece—emerge from it and head down the corridor toward her. The girl has warm brown skin a shade darker than both Calvin's and her mother's; she's beautifully dressed in a green wool coat with a matching beret, and Phyllis remembers Calvin speaking with pride of the money he gives his sister to pay for her clothes.

Phyllis nods to them, and the woman hesitates and then nods back, wary but polite. She gives her daughter a discreet nudge, and the girl nods too, with the same guarded good manners. When they've gone, Phyllis taps at the door and pushes it open.

"Hey, Miss Baxter." Calvin's speech is a bit mushy, as if he has marbles in his mouth, and his smile is crooked at one side, but Cora has told Phyllis that the doctors expect these things to improve with time. His head is partially shaven and wrapped in neat white bandages, and he's propped up on pillows in his narrow iron bed, wearing striped pyjamas and a dressing gown. There's a pitcher of water and a half-full drinking glass on the small table, which is as pristine and polished as everything else in the hospital. Mr Carson would be impressed, Phyllis thinks as she sits down in one of the straight chairs at the bedside.

"Oh Calvin, I'm so glad you're awake."

"You and me both," Calvin says. "There's not enough aspirin in the world for the headache I've got, but I'm glad to have it. Least it means I'm still in the land of the living."

'Thank goodness for that," Phyllis says fervently. "Have you remembered what happened? Mrs Levinson said you couldn't, at first."

"Some. Not much." Calvin struggles to sit up farther in his bed; waves Phyllis off when she starts to help. "I know men broke into the house, and one of them hit me, but I can't remember a thing between when I parked the car and when I went to help you and the little girl down from that window. What was her name? Rosie?"

"Ruthie."

"Yeah, Ruthie. Next thing after that is when we were in Mr Levinson's office and I was laying on the sofa, sort of fading in and out. I knew you were there, Miss Baxter, and that was about all. I heard a gunshot and thought 'that's it, I'm done for,' and then nothing else until I woke up here in the hospital. The nurses and my sister told me some of what happened when I was out, and the cops did too, once they'd had to admit that I hadn't jumped up with my busted-open head and shot that gun myself." He pulls a face, made even more wry and twisted by his crooked mouth. "No one's told me all of it yet, though. Will you?"

"Of course, but are you certain you feel strong enough? You've just had other visitors; I shouldn't stay long and tire you even more—"

"Doesn't matter if I'm tired or not," Calvin says. "I want to hear it. I've got this big black hole in my memory, and every time I come across it, I feel awful all over. Sort of floaty and disconnected from myself, like I really died that night, and I just don't know it yet. You think ghosts know they're dead, Miss Baxter?"

"Yes," Phyllis says. "And you're not a ghost, I promise. I would know it even if you didn't."

"You sure about that?" Calvin's half-smiling, as if he wants to pretend he's joking, but his eyes are dark and grave and frightened. There's a droop to the lid of the left one, Phyllis notices, and feels a rush of pity for him that she tries to hide. She doesn't think Calvin would like to be pitied.

"Quite sure," she says. "All right, lie back and I'll tell you the whole story, start to finish."

She tells him, as simply and concisely as she can, and when she gets to the part where Ruthie pulled the trigger and shot Mickey, he grimaces and says "Jesus! That tiny kid? She was half the size of my sister's girl Ella, I remember that much. She didn't weigh a thing when I lifted her down from the window."

"It didn't stop them treating her like a full-grown criminal," Phyllis says bitterly, picturing Ruthie in the police station, drowning in her outsize smock. "Until the Levinsons got involved, that is. Mr Levinson's solicitor came, and then the police interviewed her again and she told them all about Mickey and Jess and the people they associated with, and it was even worse than you might think. Robbing the house might have been the first really large-scale crime they'd tried to commit, but there were plenty of others before it. And—" She falters, trying to think of a decent way to phrase it. "Ruthie told them that Mickey had been…behaving inappropriately toward her for quite some time. He—"

"No need to explain, Miss Baxter." Calvin's expression is grim. "I know what you mean."

"Yes," Phyllis says, relieved. "I don't know if they believed her at first, but then they interviewed Jess and she told them it was true. How she could keep letting Mickey into their home, knowing that—well, it's a mystery, but she did." She falls silent for a moment, thinking about Jess and the unwilling sympathy she'd had for her at first; a fellow feeling that had evaporated in an instant when she'd learnt the full extent of how little Jess had cared for the children in her charge. Phyllis has long since accepted her own status as a criminal and the choices that led her there, but even at her lowest she knows she never would have harmed a child, or allowed one to be harmed.

"Anyway," she says, "once they'd made up their minds not to try Ruthie formally for Mickey's death, they wanted to put her in a home for delinquent girls, but Mrs Levinson wasn't having with that. She said Ruthie had done the world a favour, getting rid of Mickey, and she didn't deserve to be locked up for it, even if it wasn't in a real prison."

"So what's happening to her?"

Phyllis smiles. "Mrs Levinson suggested sending her to the same school that Lady Grantham attended as a girl, but her Ladyship said Ruthie wouldn't be happy there—it's too posh, and she'd be missing her brothers—and I thought so as well. So for now, Ruthie and her middle brother are at a boarding school somewhere north of here, one of the new co-educational ones, and the little one is being fostered by a family in the same town, so they can visit at weekends. Ruthie is the only one of the three who can read and write, and not very well at that, but Mrs Levinson says the teachers will catch them all up or she'll know the reason why."

"Sounds like Mrs Levinson to me," Calvin says. He looks ashen and exhausted, and Phyllis realises she'll have to go soon so he can rest. "You said 'for now,' though. What about later?"

"Well," Phyllis says, "I had thought..."

"That you might take them yourself?"

"Yes, only I can't take three children to another country to live just like that. It isn't as easy to emigrate as it was fifty years ago, or even twenty; there are procedures to follow and—it's complicated. And beyond that, I haven't got a home of my own, and I can hardly move them into my room at the big house."

"Course not," Calvin says. "But your friend Molesley, you said he's got a house, didn't you?"

Phyllis bites her lip. "Not much of one, but yes, he has. I was thinking—but I've got to discuss it with him first. It wouldn't be right to make a decision like that on his behalf. And I'd need to live there too, to help look after the children, and I couldn't do that unless…"

"Yeah, _unless_ ," Calvin says, and even with the slurring from his injury, his voice has the gently teasing tone that sounds like the Calvin she first met. "So you better get to work on that _unless_ as soon as you're together again, huh?"

"I'll think about it," Phyllis says, feeling a flush start to burn in her cheeks. "Honestly, you and her Ladyship are as bad as each other. She said the same thing."

"Pretty sure her Ladyship wouldn't like hearing herself compared to the chauffeur. Well, the former chauffeur." Calvin reaches out an unsteady hand for the water glass on his table, and Phyllis picks it up and gives it to him so he can drink, then returns it to its place.

"What will you do for work now?" she asks. To an outsider, she knows this might seem like an impolite question, but she is just as much a servant as he is, and she feels the dread of being ill or injured or old and no longer able to earn her living.

"They said I might be able to drive again in a few months, or I might not. Tell you the truth, I don't think they really know much about what happens to people's brains when they get scrambled up. But Mr Levinson said if I can drive, I can come back same as always, and if I can't, he'll find another job for me. Maybe I'll be the butler." Calvin laughs, then winces as the sharp movement jostles his aching head. "Whatever it is, I'll be grateful, 'cause Ella just started high school and I want her to finish, not quit after the ninth grade to work like me and Lillie did. Mr Molesley'd know what I mean, wouldn't he?"

"Yes," Phyllis says. Suddenly she is nearly frantic to be on her way home, to see Joseph's kind, mild face and hear from his own mouth what he thinks of all this. Calvin seems to pick up her thoughts, like one of the crystal radios people build from kits, because he settles down into the bed as if preparing to sleep.

"You should go on now, Miss Baxter. You got a ship to catch, and I got a nap to take, so we're both going to be busy this afternoon. I'm glad you came to see me before you left."

"So am I," Phyllis says. It wouldn't be proper to embrace him, but she lays her hand over his where it rests against the blanket, and he curls his fingers around and gives her a brief squeeze, nearly strengthless because this is the weak side of his body.

"You better write me when you get home," he says. "At least a postcard. I'll be laid up for a while yet, so it'll be good to have something to look forward to, and I got to know what Molesley says." He grins, lopsidedly. "And if it's not yes, you tell him Calvin Rhodes thinks he's crazy."

"I'll write," Phyllis promises. "Goodbye, Calvin. Look after yourself."

"You too, Miss Baxter."

Phyllis is seasick for the first two days of the voyage again, but not as badly: either she's developing a tolerance for ocean travel, or she's so glad to be pointed in a homeward direction that she doesn't care as much. Cora is worn out from their experiences and has little interest in going to the dining room for meals, or indeed leaving her stateroom, so Phyllis only has to dress her for the morning and afternoon, leaving most of the day free for reading or sewing or just lying on the bed in her own room, going over her memories of everything that's happened.

She's already decided not to write to Molesley before sailing, thinking that some things are best explained in person, but on board she writes the first of her promised letters to Calvin to wish him well in his recovery, and one to Ruthie, whom she knows from experience will be eager for any communication from the outside world. Oakwood Friends School may be not be a prison, but it's so different from everything Ruthie has known all her life that she expects it may feel a bit like one, at least at first. She dreams of Ruthie there, not in the sepia tones of the photographs in the brochure Lady Grantham showed her, but in full living colour, surrounded by wide lawns and autumn woods aflame with crimson and orange. In the dreams Ruthie has already grown to the proper size for her age, and the wary distrust has left her face; she's happy and healthy and laughing with her brothers, all three of them properly fed and rested for the first time in their lives. Would it be right to take them away and force them to adapt to yet another new place, even farther from home?

Phyllis frets over the possibilities all the way through the five days at sea and the two-day train voyage, until at last she steps down onto the platform at Downton station, with the handles of Cora's carpet bag hooked over her wrist and a pair of hatboxes stacked in her arms. It's a cold, damp, grey, miserable day with rain spitting off and on from the sky, and she's never been happier to see the sort of bad weather that feels like home. She turns around to look for Cora, who has been seated in the first-class compartment, and then her heart takes a wild skip in her chest as she spies a well-known figure in the distance, walking along the lane that leads towards the station with his best tweed coat on and a sturdy umbrella furled in one hand.

"What's the matter, Baxter?" Cora asks archly from behind her, and Phyllis turns back so fast that she nearly knocks over her Ladyship, who looks as pleased with herself as she does after a successful dinner party or a fundraiser for her hospital.

"I'm terribly sorry, milady, I just wasn't expecting anyone to be here apart from the driver with the car. I hadn't written to Mr Molesley with our arrival date, and—"

"Well, _I_ certainly didn't write to Mr Molesley," Cora says. "But I may have sent a cable to Mrs Hughes, only so she could be ready for us of course, and when I did that, I might also have mentioned that Mr Molesley would be interested in knowing when you'd be home. Possibly."

"Oh," Phyllis says, unable to summon up any other words. Molesley has gained the edge of the platform and is hovering at a distance, looking thrilled and anxious all at once, as if he thinks she may have forgot him sometime in the last two months.

"Well, go on," Cora says with a small, mischievous smile. "You've been looking forward to this, haven't you?"

"Yes, but milady, we're in public—"

"Oh, for goodness' sake, go and kiss him before I do it myself." Cora laughs at her startled expression. "Just leave the things here. Tom can get them. As for me, I intend to lie down for the rest of the afternoon and have dinner in my room, so I won't need anything until bedtime. I'll see you then."

Phyllis sets down the hatboxes and the carpet bag, and then trying not to look as if she's hurrying, crosses the platform to where Molesley is waiting. They stand face to face, as she takes in every bit of him, from the familiar blue of his eyes to his soft, hopeful smile to the tiny nick on his chin where he's cut himself shaving, and then she twines both of her gloved hands into both of his and stands on the toes of her sensible black travelling shoes to kiss him as if no one is watching. He's warm and solid and reassuring under her hands and lips, the very essence of home, and she decides that propriety can go hang and goes back in for another one before the first is really over.

"I was going to ask if you'd missed me," he says when she finally draws away, and she laughs, giddy with the joy of being here. There's a sensation of real physical relief, as if she's been carrying a colossal, invisible weight everywhere she goes for months, and has finally been able to put it down. She feels light enough to spring into the air and fly the distance from here to Molesley's cottage.

"You can ask if you like," she says. Their hands are still clasped, drawing a few curious glances from people passing by, but overall the verdict seems to be mild amusement rather than disapproval.

"I think I've already got my answer," Molesley says. "Where are your things? Are you expected up at the house, or—"

Phyllis shakes her head, laughing again. "Tom's taken my things, and her Ladyship would lock the doors if she saw me coming back now. She knows I've got lots to tell you."

"Good things or bad things?"

"Some of both," Phyllis says. "I'll tell it as we go."


End file.
